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JANE JANSEN. 


“Earnest in the belief that life in the country is nearest connate with 
man’s organization, securing to him constantly the greatest of all blessings, 
perfect health and physical development, and standing with outstretched arms 
a great world of counter-forces or balance-sheet in favor of humanity, against 
the destructive influence of city life or the fatal results of the swarming 
instincts, founding the Sanitarium, [now Cresson,] and uttering a voice 
from the woods, have become a mission, solemn as a command from Heaven, 
and with the sternness and reality of life and death.” — D r. R. M. S. Jack- 
son : The Mountain, vi. 


JANE JANSEN: 

A STORY OF A WOMAN’S HERITAGE 

IN THE HEART OF APPALACHIA. 


INVOLVING ADVENTURES IN HAWAII, JAPAN, AND KOREA, AND THE WRECK 
OF “THE WHALE-HAWK” IN THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ; AND RE- 
LATING THE INCIDENTS OF A VARIED AND EVENTFUL LIFE IN 
SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA, INCLUDING AN ESCAPE 
FROM THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD, WITH MANY PARTIC- 
ULARS OF THAT UNPARALLELED DISASTER. 


WRITER'S PROOF EDITION, LIMITED TO TWENTY-SEVEN COPIES. 



U /S' 6"; OJL 

GREENESBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA : 

THE OLIVER PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

18 9 5 . 


vz 3 


J 

cep y 2 


COPYRIGHT BY 

r JHE OLIVER PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

G REENESB UR GH, PENN’ A , 

1895 . 



DEDICATION. 


H. C. Frick, Esq., 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

You and I are strangers. 

The story of your life as a typical business man of America, how- 
ever, is known to me, as it is to many thousands besides, and prized 
for the incentive to enterprise it contains and the encouragement to 
persevere, in despite of all difficulties and obstacles, to the end in 
view ; and since it presents a singularly striking contrast to mine, 
the story of a woman who was born about the time you began your 
remarkable career and who has resided the greater part of her life on 
a mountain-top overlooking in part the field of your vast operations 
in Southwestern Pennsylvania, as related in the following pages, I 
trust, as a minor expression of your open-hearted nature, you will 
permit the public to consider for a moment our several stories side 
by side — or, figuratively speaking, with the mind’s eye, Horatio, to 
gaze on two series of pictures illustrating our several lives, sus- 
pended on opposite walls of the Carnegie Art Gallery, in Schenley 
Park, if you please. 

In the series illustrating your story, the backgrounds of all are as 
black as the celebrated Connellsville Coking Coal Seam from the 
Conemaugh to the Monongahela can make them — as black as the 
clouds of smoke and soot which hang over the great industrial val- 
leys of Southwestern Pennsylvania — as black as the Acheronic wa- 
ters of Brush Creek below the big slack- washer at Larimer — as black 
as envy, malice, and malignity can paint or be painted — as black as 
the heart’s blood of an anarchical assassin may be symbolized in a 
hue ; while in the series illustrating mine, the backgrounds of all are 


VI 


DEDICATION. 


as white as the marbles of Greece which my maternal ancestors in 
part have chiseled — as white as the foam and spindrift of the earth- 
enveloping ocean which the adventurous prows of my paternal ances- 
tors for several generations have cut in the pursuit of the mighty 
mammals of the deep — as white as a week of agony can blanch the 
hair in a lava-conduit of Haw r aii — as white as the snow-capped peak 
of Fujiyama can gleam over a bed of anguish in the harbor of 
Yokohama — as white as the linen robes of the mysterious Mongol- 
ians of Chosen or Korea that fleck like sheep the mountain-flanks of 
Gensan — as white as the brow of a brother that came into visible 
being and vanished like a breath in a frosty morning — as white as the 
coffined forms of a broken-hearted father and mother — as white as 
the thousands of shrouds that wrapped the dead in the valley of the 
Conemaugh in the wake of the Johnstown Flood — as white as the 
milk which a mountain-top dairy supplied the motherless infants 
that survived the unparalleled disaster — as white as the bursting 
bloom of the wild rhododendron on the brow of a bride in the 
Heart of Appalachia — as white as the Columbian City of Enchant- 
ment that rose from the marshes of Lake Michigan the admiration 
of the enlightened of the globe— as white as the wave- washed pages 
of a whaler’s log-book among the gull-pecked and shark-torn crew 
of a sunken ship off the storm-swept shores of Northeastern Asia — 
as white as Love and Honor, Worth and Truth, in representatives of 
all the great divisions of mankind on a mountain-top, may gleam 
afar at noonday above the involvings of evil and vice that shadow 
the valleys below. 

Further, in the series of pictures illustrating the story of your 
life, the lights which reveal your individuality are artificial ; and in 
the order of the series, one standing for one or many, they are a 
miner’s lamp, a coke-oven, the headlight of a locomotive, a furnace- 
mouth belching lurid glare and fiery gleam like an awakening vol- 
cano, a converter cascading an infinity of coruscations, a riot-fired 
burning coal-tipple, an assassin’s pistol-shot, a governmental can- 
non’s discharge, and an electric chandelier with its multiple-lights 
multiplied amazingly by opposing mirrors: the first illuminating the 
features of a beardless boy entering the cavern of a coal-mine at 
Broadford, a veritable Aladdin with his wonderful lamp ; and the 


DEDICATION. 


vii 

last, a middle-aged man, a husband and father, with his wife and 
children at his side, entertaining a host of friends, including many 
of the most illustrious men and women of the age, in the sumptu- 
ously furnished parlors of a palatial residence in the fashionable 
East End of Pittsburgh — the genii-built Palace of Enchantment of 
the Arabian tale surpassed in reality ! While in the series illustrat- 
ing my life, the lights which reveal my individuality are all natural, 
from the moon and the stars, and the sun from dawn to dusk — and 
especially the light which affects the most the big-eyed and imagi- 
native art-creating race which I represent, that of the latter part of 
the afternoon, when the Shadow attains its perfection and shapeful 
things have thickness as well as length and breadth, the statue ro- 
tundity, the landscape distance, and the ideal the substantiality of 
the real. 

Further, while both series illustrate a remarkable success, or an 
evolution from a humble beginning to a grand and glorious end, 
yours is a crown which worthily befits your earnest, energetic, and 
upright career as an objective Man, in fearless defiance of all the 
forces of adversity and remorseless rivalry in the warlike struggle 
for existence and preeminence that centres in the Iron Heart of the 
Western Hemisphere, the City of Pittsburgh ; as I am fain to believe 
mine is a commensurable reward for my constancy in the extremities 
of distress to correct principles of duty to self and others, as a sub- 
jective Woman. 

Howsoever, the contrast between the stories of our lives, I beg you 
will accept the dedication of my book in token of my appreciation 
of your achievements as a representative man of America and of the 
esteem and honor in which I hold you from the knowledge I have of 
the many remarkable manly qualities which you possess and which 
endear you to your wife and children and your myriad of known 
and unknown friends : 

< 

Among the former of whom I hope to be advanced from the latter, 
after a perusal of the following pages. 

Jane Jansen Holland. 

The Heart of Appalachia , 

11 December, 1894. 


u The wondrous intellect of the Greek has filled the horizon of human vis- 
ion for hundreds of years. With a physical conformation perfect, and ren- 
dered godlike by a habitat in which the perfection and splendor of nature 
were revealed and the beauty of the world exhausted, he has, in all his crea- 
tions, made the ideal real, by an eternal production of himself, ‘ his body abso- 
lutely expressing his soul.’ 

“ In his highest efforts, forever captivated by truth and beauty, he became 
the prophet, priest, and king of nature, making his artistic or reproduced world 
bright with the immortal stars of thought, redolent of Olympian airs, aromatic 
shades, haunts and bowers of the gods. The muses, the heavenly nine, hover 
around his path of progress, and the glory of an undebauched, un fallen world 
is shadowed forth in ‘ shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest, in visions, in 
soul, the grandest that crowd on the tear-dimmed eye/ in the prophetic oracles 
of Delphi, in the whispering of the groves of Dodona. In all his intellectual 
manifestations true ; true in the symbolism of the world embodied in his poet- 
ical mythology ; true in the instincts of his mind in the path of science ; per- 
fect in the world of the senses and understanding, his genesis of the healing 
art is the embodiment of wisdom. What but a Grecian hand could chisel an 
Apollo of Belvidere, the ideal physical ? and what but a Grecian head could 
create the magical romance of the son of Zeus and Leto, the ideal spiritual ? 
— both worlds united in the form of the God of Medicine, Divination, and 
Poetry /^J ackson : The Mountain, p. 486. 


JANE JANSEN. 


I. 

My maternal grandmother, Margaret Zampelios, was born in Ath- 
ens, and united in her veins the blood of two families who for ages 
have peopled in part the isles of Greece and the shores of the 
iEgean, and included a noteworthy number of men and women of 
distinguished merit, as sculptors, poets, painters, soldiers, and states- 
men. She was educated in the schools of Athens and Constanti- 
nople, and at the age of eighteen made a tour of the little world of 
the Levant, going as far east as Damascus, as far south as Cairo, and 
as far west as Rome. Wherever she went, her majestic form and 
well defined features of the old heroic type attracted observation and 
elicited enquiry, while her accomplishments as a linguist and artist 
evoked remark and commendation, which in turn extended far and 
wide a favorable impression of her womanly charms and artistic 
achievements; and at the age of twenty, she was not only an 
acknowledged belle in oriental society but a celebrity. 

At this time she became enamored with an English lieutenant, 
who in appearance was remarkably tall, gaunt and grim, and in 
character daring, determined and honorable. Unhappily for her, 
the gallant soldier had left behind him in England a wife and two 
children ; but happily, when he discovered the engrossing passion of 
the young woman for him, he revealed himself to her a benedict, and 
disappeared, never again to be seen or heard of by her, save in 
dreams by night and day till the day of her death. 

Soon after this crushing blow, while she was groaning in secret in 
the valley of disappointment and humiliation, she met and married 

B 


1 


10 


JANE JANSEN. 


in Smyrna my grandfather, Alexander Graham, a merchant of Phil- 
adelphia, who, in the interest of his business as an importer of 
drugs, dyes, and fruits, was sojourning then in the great mart of the 
Levant. 

Why she did so is perhaps the measure of the distress and dejec- 
tion in which he found her. A voyage to Philadelphia would take 
her from the Old World to a New — from a harrowing past to a possibly 
happy future ; and since she had loved one stranger, she might love 
another. At all events, hap weal or woe, she would escape from the 
social circle of the Levant in which a look had become a poisoned 
arrow, and a word of sympathy or pity an unendurable torture. 

But Alexander Graham, albeit a worthy man, differed greatly from 
the English lieutenant, and never took the soldier’s place in the 
affections of my grandmother. In stature, he was less than his ma- 
jestic wife by as many inches as she was less than the lieutenant. 
Outwardly he was faultlessly attired, refined in speech and address, 
and easy in manners, while in his inner nature he was grave, re- 
served and exacting. His forebears time out of mind had been 
Scotch — several of them merchants in Glasgow and Edinburgh ; and 
never was Sandy applied more appropriately to a son of Caledonia 
than to him. 

In fine, my maternal grandfather and grandmother were an ill 
matched pair ; but there was no strife between them. On the con- 
trary, he was attached to her according to his nature, that is, tena- 
ciously, like a limpet to a rock ; and she was resigned and faithful 
through good and bad fortune to the end. 

And there were both. For after a prosperity of several years’ du- 
ration, such a number of the debtors of my grandfather became 
insolvent, that he was brought to the brink of bankruptcy. Then, 
perhaps more from anxiety than exertion — more from worry than 
work to regain his commercial standing, his health failed him and 
he was obliged to withdraw from business. 

Out of the wreck he saved jetsam, flotsam and ligan barely suffi- 
cient to purchase a tract of land on one of the mountain ridges of 
Southwestern Pennsylvania, which comprised a single arable field, a 
sugar camp, a blackberry patch, a pasture thickly set with stones 
and stumps, and an unfenced belt of the forest primeval surround- 
ing the whole, and on which stood a great stone house, a greater log 
barn, and half a score of rudely constructed outbuildings ; and 
thither he repaired in the hope of regaining his health and vigor 
and resuming the station of his early manhood among the merchants 
of Philadelphia. 

He was accompanied in his flight into the wilderness by his wife 


JANE JANSEN. 


11 


and two children, who had been born unto them in the days of 
their prosperity, Helen and Melissa, together with an old negress. 
Mirabel Brown, as cook, and her daughter, Arabella, as an attend- 
ant on the little girls. 

But the hope of my grandfather and the self-sacrifice of my 
grandmother were in vain. They wore away together — the granite 
father herding a score of cattle in the forest which gave them milk 
and meat, and the marble mother painting glimpses of the Orient for 
the markets of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York, which 
yielded them the remainder of the necessaries of their retired and 
restricted existence ; until, eleven weary years with increasing 
wretchedness having passed, they died within a fortnight of each 
other, my grandfather first from a broken heart in business, and 
then my grandmother from a broken heart in love. 

On the death of their parents, Helen, the elder of the sisters (and 
my mother in due time,) was in her seventeenth year, and the 
younger, Melissa, in her fifteenth ; and, by reason of the general 
education they had received from their mother and the labor they 
had endured with their father in the field, the forest and the barn- 
yard, they were fully competent to manage their own affairs, to hold 
together the mountain tract which they had inherited, happily, 
without any incumbrance, and to continue the life, which to them, 
in the bursting of the bud of youth into the bloom of womanhood, 
was an endless succession of novel delights. 

With three cows, a calf, a pig, and a right to cut a certain number 
of saw-logs in the forest, the bills of the doctor and the undertaker 
were paid. A sturdy young farmer of good repute, Martin Rogers, 
was secured to cultivate and crop the cleared fields for a moiety, and 
with his wife and three little children, housed in comfort in part of 
the big stone mansion. Helen appropriated the multifarious 
duties belonging to the outside world — paid the taxes, bought 
and sold in the neighboring hamlets of Laughlinstown and 
Ligonier in Westmoreland county and Jennerstown and Stoys- 
town in Somerset county, and shared in the labors of, while 
she superintended, planned and directed, the making of sugar 
in the spring and cider in the fall, the boiling of soap and apple- 
butter, the picking of fruits, and the feeding and housing of their 
little stock of cattle, swine and poultry — the work of a husband ; 
while Melissa took unto herself, with the help of Mirabel and Ara- 
bella, the manifold cares and labors of the inner world of their 
mountain home — the baking, cleaning and cooking, the bed-making, 
sweeping and dusting, the scrubbing, washing and ironing, the sew- 
ing and knitting, the patching and darning — the work of a wife. 


12 


JANE JANSEN. 


They recognized this fortuitous relation of man and wife ; and 
echoes of the language of the Land of Auld Lang Syne still lingering 
in the home of Alexander Graham, they were aye “ guid mon ” and 
“ wifiekin ” to ane anither, in their familiar speech. 

In the evening they read and studied together — Helen preferring 
books pertaining to science, art, political economy, history, geog- 
raphy, mathematics, and trade, and Melissa, works of the imagina- 
tion, poetry, romance, and travels. Betimes, too, they took up their 
pencils and brushes to draw and paint, as they had been instructed 
by their mother ; but this they did more from habit than inclina- 
tion and accomplished nothing to give them encouragement or satis- 
faction — Helen being skilful in representing any visible object before 
her, and painstaking in every technical detail, but wanting imagina- 
tion, and Melissa, imaginative to an extreme degree, but lacking 
skill and interest in her work — Helen having the hand and heart of 
an artist, but not the head, and Melissa the head, but neither the 
hand nor heart. 

And so they lived for three years, each developing in accordance 
with the peculiarities of her nature — Helen, an objective entity in a 
world of objectivity, and Melissa, a subjective, in a sphere of subjec- 
tivity ; when the elder, in her twentieth year, and the younger, her 
eighteenth, they were essentially fully grown women, their forms and 
features fixed, their characters established, and their destinies — in a 
measure — determined. 

They contrasted from every point of view. Helen was an 
unhappy commingling of the most striking of the physical charac- 
teristics of her parents, having her father’s sandy hair, blue eyes, 
and florid complexion, and her mother’s stature and stately bearing, 
with a cast of countenance that revealed a caricature of the features 
of both. So, in her inner nature, she possessed the mind of her 
father with the disposition of her mother, being methodical, exact- 
ing, and severe — practical, resourceful, and self-reliant, and at the 
same time grave and energetic, calm and irresistible — a mart above, 
a glacier below. She talked, but never laughed and seldom smiled 
or sang ; she walked, but never danced nor ran ; she worked and 
knew not play ; thought without fancy and slept without dreams — 
a woman to strive and move a mountain ; a woman to suffer and 
make no moan. 

Melissa, on the other hand, was as unlike both her parents and 
her sister as it is possible perhaps for a daughter and sister to be : 
being short in stature, round in limb and body, and mirthful in dis- 
position — a dimpled, smiling, laughter-loving incarnation of good- 
will, congeniality, and jollity — as sweet and bonny a Scotch lassie, as 


JANE JANSEN. 


13 


tender and true, as ever inspired the heart and harp of a minstrel. 
But how she descended from Caledonia’s daisy-decked realm of song 
and sentiment through the polished granite of Alexander Graham, 
the importer of Philadelphia, is one of the biological enigmas which 
only atavism put to the stretch can solve — that freak of heredity by 
which the type of a remote ancestor, possibly long forgotten and 
undreamed of, is brought to the fore in offspring to the utter amaze- 
ment of parents and amusement of neighbors and friends. 

Howsoever — Helen, in her twentieth } r ear, having amassed, by her 
good management of the mountain farm and by a little outside 
speculation in railway cross-ties, bark for tanning purposes, fencing 
posts, and ginseng, a little sum of money in excess of the necessities 
of her sister and self, went to Philadelphia to lay in a supply of 
books, seeds, implements, clothing and the like, such as her enlarg- 
ing life demanded, and lodged in the house of a paternal relative, 
Robert Lindsay, a ship chandler. And here she met Jan Jansen, a 
ship-master, who was engaged in purchasing an outfit for a new 
whaling vessel, “ The Whale-Hawk ” — fell in love with him, and 
plighted troth with him — the last man in the world she ever 
dreamed of as a lover or husband ; as she, a big brained and big 
bodied maiden from the heart of Appalachia, to him was the farthest 
in form and feature from the Polly his fancy ever painted in a pic- 
ture of home and happiness. 

It was the unexpected that happened to both. And wherefore the 
unexpected? Perhaps because their several natures were unknown 
to themselves : the mirror of self seeing only others, and one’s con- 
ception of one’s self being a composite photograph made up of a 
myriad of likenesses without including or developing the true one. 
Perhaps, because our inheritance for ages through an infinity of an- 
cestors is always greater than our individual acquisitions, and will 
dominate us in despite of our conscious selves. Perhaps — but, no 
matter a woman’s philosophizing on the affinities and repulsions of 
such complex subjects as human beings. 


II. 

My father, Jan Jansen, was born in the southeastern angle of 
Pennsylvania, near the town of Media, of Dutch and Swedish pa- 
rentage — several of his ancestors — DeVries, Stuyvesant, Swen, and 
Laersen — being among the first of the immigrants from Holland and 
the Scandinavian peninsula to settle on the banks of the Delaware ; 


14 


JANE JANSEN. 


and like many of his ancestors and kindred, he was a sailor. He 
took so naturally to the sea, that, to use his conclusive language, 
“ he couldn’t help it — he was born web-footed.” And to the day of 
his death no title of address was so sweet to his ears as that by which 
he was known among his friends and acquaintances, Skipper Jan 
Jansen — the name by which his paternal forebears for four genera- 
tions had been known before him far and wide over the world of 
waters ; and with a smile of satisfaction, he would respond to any 
name that associated him with the sea and his calling, from “salt” 
and “ sea-dog ” to “ fin-back,” u sulphur-bottom,” “ blubber-hunter,” 
and the like. 

At the age of thirty, when he met my mother, my father was a 
typic specimen of a hardy seaman. His height and weight were a 
little above the average of his fellow-sailors, his chest capacious, his 
muscles well developed, and his feet and hands small. His com- 
plexion was ruddy, his eyes blue, and his hair and beard yellowish 
with a coppery sheen — his beard so remarkably compact as to seem 
solid and impervious to water. His features harmonized with his 
body in shape and proportion. He was active and energetic, and in 
the presence of the dangers incident to a sea-faring life, to which he 
had been accustomed from early boyhood, ready, resourceful, and 
fearless. He was kind, generous and sympathetic. Withal, how- 
ever, he was excitable, impulsive, and impetuous ; and whenever his 
breast was heaved by emotion, his head became the football of his 
heart and his character became involved in a chaos of contrariety, 
ludicrous, dangerous, pitiful, or otherwise, as the engendering feeling 
might determine. Had his moral nature been trained to work in 
harness as well as his muscular, he would have been a man among 
a million, marked for his superior virtues. 

Having been successful in several whaling expeditions in the 
Northern Pacific, he determined to be the owner and master of the 
best ship engaged in the trade ; and while he was awaiting the com- 
pletion of the vessel at New Bedford, he made a special visit to 
Philadelphia, to purchase from his old friend, Robert Lindsay, the 
necessary stores for a long cruise, and unexpectedly found a mate in 
my mother, as I have said. 

I think it was the immutable and inflexible in my mother’s char- 
acter that attracted and finally fascinated my father, as it was the 
volatile, the vehement, and the uncertain in my father’s make-up 
that absolved my mother from her former self and united her in a 
double existence indissolubly with my father. They were supple- 
mental : each supplying the other’s needs, and each calling into 
action the best of the other’s being ; each being useful to the other. 


JANE JANSEN. 


15 


they met with pleasure and parted with pain, and soon became 
inseparable. 

My father accompanied my mother from the residence of her rela- 
tive in Philadelphia, Robert Lindsay, to the old homestead in 
Southwestern Pennsylvania, in order that he might become acquain- 
ted with my Aunt Melissa, and that they together might agree on 
some plan for the future which would be mutually agreeable and 
satisfactory. Finally, after discussing a number of propositions, it 
was agreed that the farm should be leased for three years to Martin 
Rogers, who had proven himself worthy in every respect and who 
agreed to retain the old cook, Mirabel, and her daughter, Arabella, 
in their accustomed service; and, in order that the loving sisters 
might not be parted by the marriage of the elder and the manager 
for both, that the twain should accompany my father in the first 
cruise of his new vessel, and participate, as Skipper Jansen’s wife 
and Skipper Jansen’s sister-in-law in the grandest and most roman- 
tic wedding tour ever hear of, around the world in the finest whale- 
ship afloat; and, in the event of the voyage proving reasonably 
remunerative, that my father should lease his vessel for five years 
and reside for that length of time with his wife and sister-in-law in 
their mountain home, satisfying his longing to be riding on the 
mighty rollers of the Pacific by hoeing corn and potatoes on one of 
the mightier mountain waves of Appalachia. 

In accordance with this agreement, the farm was leased, my 
father and mother were married, and the happy trio set out for New 
Bedford ; and in a short time after their arrival, the ship was fin- 
ished, a crew engaged, and provisions for a three years’ cruise stowed 
away in the ample hold. Then, amid the acclamations of the 
throng of well-wishing friends and acquaintances who had assem- 
bled on the shore, the anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and, 
under the impulsion of a favorable wind, “ The Whale-Hawk ” 
moved in the world of waters — an outcast fragment of the earth 
peopled and freighted with all the involvings of humanity, to wan- 
der a while in space, a little world in itself. 

The favorite whaling waters of my father were the several seas 
which form as many parts of the Northern Pacific, Behring’s, the 
Korean, the Kamtchatkan, and the like ; but being the sole owner of 
his vessel and her own master, and likely to fall in with one or other 
species J of the commercial whales in any of the great divisions of the 
ocean, he was as free as the wind to go and come as it satisfied his 
caprice or conviction, or gratified the desire of my mother or aunt. 
Scarcely was the honeymoon over, accordingly, when “ The Whale- 
Hawk ” entered the Tagus and Skipper Jansen, with his wife and 


16 


JANE JANSEN. 


wife’s sister, disembarked in Lisbon to spend a fortnight in feasting 
mind and body on the diversified products of Portugal. Thence, the 
happy trio speeded to Rio de Janeiro to spend another glorious fort- 
night amid the unrivaled scenic beauties of the City of the Royal 
Palm. Thence, proceeding southward, while off the coast of South- 
ern Brazil, (15th May, 1869,) one of the memorable incidents of 
the cruise occurred. A starving negro of gigantic proportions was 
picked up from a drifting raft, and, at the instance of my mother 
was put under her charge to be trained as a cabin boy, albeit a head 
taller than any man on the ship. He had been sixteen days afloat, 
but not wholly without food and water save for the three days pre- 
ceding his rescue. He was a refugee from a Brazilian master, made 
desperate by the exasperating and goading involvings of slavery to a 
free-born adult slave ; and from the tribal scars on his cheek, and 
artificial warts raised in a row across his forehead and adown his nose 
to the tip, and from his inability to understand a word of Portu- 
guese, or other European language, it was very evident that he was a 
recent importation from the west coast of Africa — a smuggled slave 
in the teeth of national and international edict. When my Aunt 
Melissa beheld him for the first time, after he had been lifted on 
deck and his ravenous greed for food and drink appeased in a meas- 
ure, she called him the Congo incarnate and christened him “ Congo ” 
forthwith. He was supposed to be about thirty -two years of age; 
and when he regained his flesh, his skin became remarkably smooth 
and glossy to the eye and velvety to the touch, and he walked the 
deck with a stateliness and grace becoming a proud and polished 
monarch. He acquired rapidly and performed his various duties so 
well that he became soon an invaluable servant, and attended my 
mother with a deference approaching worship. Several of his Afri- 
can accomplishments, moreover, were novel to all aboard and served 
to relieve the monotony of ocean life. Out of the long wing bones 
of the wandering albatross, which the sailors caught with baited 
hooks while doubling Cape Horn, he made a pair of flutes, which, 
being inserted in his nostrils, and blown into through his nose, 
while the lateral vents were covered and opened by the fingers, emit- 
ted a kind of music which was ludicrous in the extreme if not 
harmonious. Then, while sitting on the deck, with the hemisphere 
of his big black abdomen bared, he would impart to it a series of 
contortions, evertions and invertions, so extraordinary as to fill the 
beholders with wonder as well as amusement. Besides these special 
accomplishments, he could sing and dance, and harangue imaginary 
hosts, and mimic, in colossal grotesqueness, everybody aboard, to the 
delight of all, but especially my Aunt Melissa who declared that he 


JANE JANSEN. 


17 


was a more valuable catch than the biggest whale in the Pacific. 

After rounding Cape Horn, “ The Whale-Hawk ” put into the har- 
bors of Valparaiso and Callao and remained long enough for the 
happy trio — Skipper Jansen, his wife, and sister-in-law — to visit the 
capitol cities of Santiago and Lima. Thence, proceeding north- 
ward, the vessel touched at the largest of the Galapagos Islands and 
the crew obtained a supply of the gigantic edible land-tortoise for 
which these equatorial islands are celebrated among the sailors of 
the Pacific. Thence, after a day or two spent in the harbor of Aca- 
pulco, the vessel, still proceeding northward, entered and came to 
anchor in the harbor of Hilo, the principal port of Hawaii, the 
largest of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, where another of the 
memorable incidents of the cruise occurred. 


III. 

My father, my mother, and my aunt went ashore and lodged in a 
new hotel kept by an American, who, when he learned his guests 
were Pennsylvanians treated them with especial courtesy and consid- 
eration, saying, in the candor of his open-hearted nature, “My name 
is Iddings — Marmaduke Iddings. I came from the western end of 
the grand old Keystone State myself ; and I take an especial pleas- 
ure in putting myself and my belongings at your service, to see the 
great crater of Kelauea, to make a tour of the island, or whatsoever 
you desire.” 

Now my father and my aunt desired above all things to visit the 
world-renowned volcano, and off they started on horseback, escorted 
by Mr. Iddings, in the early morning of the second day after their 
arrival, leaving my mother — just then entering the seventh month of 
maternity, and unable to ride a round trip of sixty miles over a 
rough lava road without great pain and peril — in the hotel behind 
them, under the charge of their hostess, a most estimable woman, 
half English and half Hawaiian, a maternal cousin of Queen 
Emma. 

An hour or so afterward, my mother set out to take a walk, osten- 
sibly to gather ferns in the neighborhood of the little city, but in re- 
ality for the benefit of the ' exercise to her unborn babe and to her- 
self so long restricted in her movements aboard the whaling vessel. 
She carried a basket for her collections and an umbrella to shield her 
from the rapidly alternating sunshine and showers of the tropical 
island. 

C 


18 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ Will you not take a guide ? ” enquired Mrs. Iddings. 

u No,” responded my mother in her self-reliant manner. “I have 
been used to walk alone from childhood, among the rocks and 
rhododendrons of Appalachia; and besides, I have a good nose for 
danger, and in my present condition I will be sure to heed my moni- 
tor’s warning.” 

“ But you may step aside from your path to pluck a flower here 
and a fern there, and not be able to find it when you would, and per- 
haps, walk farther than you should.” 

“ As for walking too far,” replied my mother, “ I am sure I could 
walk for many miles without any ill effect, for I have been clamber- 
ing over mountains all my life ; and as for losing my way by day or 
night on this island, that is impossible. Down hill, from any point 
on it, will surely bring me to the sea ; and all the rivulets for miles 
inland must unite to form the little river that rushes and boils within 
its lava banks a few rods from your door. And besides, here are 
these little volcanic cones, just on the outskirts of your scattered city 
— they are landmarks the wife of Skipper Jansen has seen, with her 
husband’s eyes as well as her own, as “ The Whale-Hawk ” entered 
and anchored in the harbor of Hilo, and she will never forget 
them.” 

About noon my mother was at a point about four miles inland, in 
a southwesterly direction from Hilo, with the little volcanic land- 
marks, between her and the city — slowly walking in the cattle paths 
among the ferns and herbage plants which grew luxuriantly in the 
crevices between the broken fragments of lava with which the region 
for miles around is covered, and enjoying every step of her hap- 
hazard way in the new world of wonders and delights in which she 
found herself. Here she came upon a pit about eight or ten feet in 
depth which revealed the circular opening of one of the several con- 
duits through which the molten lava a few years before had descend- 
ed from the great volcano of Mauna Loa, forty miles distant, to an 
alarming nearness to the city of Hilo. The pit was formed by the 
caving in of the roof of the conduit, induced by the decay to which 
lava is subject by the combined effect of water and vegetation. 
Curious to examine the strange cavern which openedbeneath her, of 
which she had heard and read but of which with her want of imag- 
ination she had never formed any satisfactory conception, she de- 
scended wdth little difficulty the broken sides of the pit, and bend- 
ing a little looked into the tunnel. It was almost as round and 
clean as newly-laid vitrified sewer pipe, about five feet in diameter, 
with blotches of color here and there, reddish, brownish, and yellow- 
ish weathering stains, and here and there stalactitic accretions either 


JANE JANSEN. 


19 


depending from the roof or projecting from the sides, and here and 
there, afar in the depths of the cavern, a ray of sunshine through a 
crevice, inviting her to enter and explore — to see for herself and be 
satisfied, in accordance with her nature that demanded the objective. 
One rod, two, three, four, she curiously invaded the conduit, till a 
sudden darkening of the crevice induced her to stop and ascertain 
the cause. 

“Ah, only a passing cloud,” she said, as she discerned the ob- 
scured sky through a chink above her head, “ and a shower per- 
haps,” as she felt a drop of rain on her upturned face. 

It was a shower, but a tropical shower such as my mother had 
never seen before, and such as occur betimes on the eastern coast of 
Hawaii with a fall of water in a given time equaled rarely elsewhere 
on the globe. The lightning blazed through the crevices into the 
deepest recesses of the cavern, and the thunder crashed in reverber- 
ating roars seemingly without end in the vast tube-like vault of the 
self-formed lava-sewer. Here and there a little stream of water 
poured into the tunnel, and a rivulet formed at her feet as the waters 
came together in the concavity of the floor and descended the chan- 
nel towards the sea. 

“ How fortunate to find shelter before the coming of this terrible 
storm ! How lucky to escape this tropical deluge with no more 
inconvenience than to hold up my skirts a little and stride a rivu- 
let ! ” my mother thought. 

Suddenly she was blown into the cavern a few yards and hurled 
violently to the floor ; and, in the bewilderment she experienced on 
arising, bruised, dripping with water, and jarred in every atom of 
her organic being, she was conscious only of having heard a deafen- 
ing crash at the mouth of the tunnel and felt an irresistible rush of 
wind — that her basket and umbrella were not in her hand — that, as 
she sought for them and took them in her hand — that the cavern 
was darker than before — that the mouth of the cavern was closed by 
the falling of a great part of the roof — and that the water was rising 
above her ankles in the dam formed by the falling lava. 

She realized at once the danger she was in and set about to effect 
an escape by removing the obstructions at the mouth of the tunnel. 
She was strong, and the accumulating waters were only to her knees 
when she began ; but she was not able to remove a single fragment 
of the fallen lava, and the water was up to her breasts when she was 
forced to desist and seek immediate safety by ascending the tunnel 
and a very probable escape by finding a crevice sufficiently large to 
admit the passage of her body, or a caving-in similar to that by 
which she had entered. 


20 


JANE JANSEN. 


The water became shallower at every step and she soon was out ol 
danger of drowning. The storm ceased ; the heavy clouds drifted 
away ; and straws and ribbons of sunshine began to shoot across 
the darkness of the cavern, to the great encouragement of the 
imprisoned woman. 

“ It is no later than two or half-past two in the afternoon,” 
thought my mother, as she observed the angle of the cheering rays ; 
“ and if I find an outlet soon, I can get back to Hilo before sun- 
down and never feel a whit the worse for the general shaking up I 
have sustained and the unexpected bath I have taken. See, too, 
how the stream of water in which I have been wading has de- 
creased to a rivulet and is soaking through the porous lava faster 
than it enters from above. Before it disappears entirely, I must 
quench my thirst and well ; for it may be some time before I get out 
of this hole and find my way back to Hilo.” So, placing her basket 
and umbrella by her side, and kneeling in the decreasing rivulet, she 
dammed it with her clothing, and taking up the water in her 
hands brought together in the form of a cup, slaked her thirst and 
laid away a supply against a possible contingency that was becom- 
ing more and more a probable contingency in her mind, unused as 
she was to crossing the bridge before coming to it. 

She took up her basket and umbrella and plodded on and on, now 
rapidly in the glimmering light, now slowly in the gloom, now, 
almost at a standstill, in absolute darkness. 

“ How lucky it is Skipper Jansen and Melissa are away at Kil- 
auea and will not return until day after to-morrow. They will be 
spared any anxiety or trouble on my account. But poor Mrs. 
Iddings — how can I ever forgive myself for the solicitude I am 
causing her even now, for I should have been back before this. 
And if I do not return soon, what will she think? What will she 
do? Doubtless, she will send somebody to seek me. But how will 
that somebody be able to find me in this underground passage? 
How will anybody know I have entered it ? After the deluge of rain 
that has fallen, the best of dogs would be unable to follow my trail. 
I must do what I can to assist in finding the lost. I must reveal if 
possible the subterranean wilderness in which I am wandering and 
the direction. But how? Ah, I have it.” 

She took up the fern leaves in her basket and laid one on the floor 
of the tunnel wherever a ray of light fell, the tip of the frond point- 
ing in the direction she went ; and tearing her umbrella to pieces, 
she thrust one of the ribs with a pendant strip of the cover attached 
to it, through a crevice in the roof whenever she found one in her 
judgment suitable — the first streamer having one knot in it, the sec- 


JANE JANSEN, 


21 

vmd two, and so on, that the direction taken might be inferred from 
the sequence. 

u Now, in case anybody gets into the tunnel behind me, he will 
see the fresh leaves and follow in the way they are pointed ; and in 
case anybody comes above me in the neighborhood of this tunnel, 
he will see my flags of distress and follow in the way the knots are 
numbered, till I am found — alive — or dead ! ” 

For as all the leaves that were in her basket now lay behind her, 
and all the signals into which her umbrella could be made floated 
among the ferns above her, and all the fragments into which the 
basket could be broken were left behind her similarly, or thrust 
above her, as night came on apace and she staggered and stumbled 
and finally sank to the floor exhausted, the thought of dying a 
double death in her unborn child and herself came to her betimes, 
with increasing frequency and intensity accompanied by a corre- 
spondingly decreasing depression of spirits. 

But she was far from yielding to despair. 

After resting an hour or two, she rose and groped her way 
cautiously along the dark circular gallery, with her head and body 
bent forward to lower her stature, and save her head as much as pos- 
sible from depending stalactites : now and then through a crevice 
getting a comforting and cheering glimpse of a star. And so, alter- 
nately resting and trudging along, she continued through the night 
and well into the middle of the following day, when joy of joys, she 
heard a sound of something living and moving about in front of her. 
Her heart bounded ; her strength came back to her ; and she moved 
forward with great rapidity. Soon she saw an outlet to the tunnel 
as round and open as the inlet she had passed through ; and in a few 
minutes she was in it — her head thrust out into the sunshine 
through it — but her steps stayed by a strange mischance. 

The tunnel opened into a pit, or caving in, similar to that which 
my mother had descended to enter the mysterious cavern, but some- 
what larger and about five feet deeper. In area, it was approxi- 
mately twenty-five feet square and in depth fifteen. The opposite 
walls, pierced by the lava-sewer, were vertical ; while those at right 
angles were broken irregularly and offered in several places a means 
of ascent and descent to a human being who could cling and clam- 
ber from one ledge to another, but not to the living thing in motion 
which my mother had heard in front of her to fill her then with joy 
and hope, but now in her sight to add to the horrors of her situa- 
tion and sink her deeper in the slough of despair. 

It was a bull which had fallen into the pit and could escape 
neither by leaping into one or other of the tunnel mouths, nor by 


22 


JANE JANSEN. 


scaling the irregular walls at right angles to them. It was, more- 
over, a wild bull, a ferocious monster, belonging to one of the many 
herds of cattle in Hawaii which have reverted to savagery, along 
with pigs, dogs, cats, and other domestic animals which from time 
to time have wandered into the wilderness and multiplied with little 
check on their increase from beasts of prey or hunters. 

At a glance my mother saw that as long as she remained in the 
mouth of the tunnel she was safe from the savage beast on a plane 
five feet below her; and when he saw her, and began to lower his 
head, and paw the lava floor of the pit, and move sideways toward 
her, and scrape his horns along the edge of the tunnel mouth at her 
feet, he became an object so familiar to her from her associations 
with cattle from childhood as to effect her only as that which stood 
before her and barred her immediate escape from the dungeon in 
which she had been imprisoned now for twenty-four hours — that 
which stood between her and freedom and the relief of poor Mrs. 
Iddings who must now be in a distressing state of anxiety about 
her. 

She sat down calmly and began to consider the best thing to be 
done under the circumstances. 

w It is simply a matter of endurance,” she soon concluded ; “ and 
the more I husband my strength by inaction of mind and body, the 
better my chances of surviving this raving bull. Yea, the one that 
frets and fumes the less will be the victor without doubt ; and now T 
Mr. Bull, since you cannot affright or excite me in the least, I will 
see what I can do to worry the life out of you — the sooner the better 
for both.” 

She took off her red flannel petticoat and waving it before the 
savage beast soon excited him to a frenzy of passionate rage. He 
pawed and scraped ; he bellowed and moaned ; he pushed against 
the wall of the prison beneath the impassive figure of my mother, 
and scored his horns against the unyielding lava, till he panted and 
paused to rest with his legs spread a little beneath him. Then, hav- 
ing recovered his strength, he renewed the attack till he was ex- 
hausted again. And so it went until nightfall, when the red flag 
lost its inflaming color in the darkness ; and so it was continued the 
following day, from dawn till dusk; and the next — this terrible 
struggle between a starving woman and a starving bull ! — and the 
next till the hour of noon, when the bull, recoiling backward to the 
opposite side of the pit from my mother, his head depressed, his 
tongue lolling at full length from his mouth, and his great frame 
vibrating in the extremity of exhaustion, sank on his haunches 
against the wall, gave a last angry look through his blood-shot eyes 


JANE JANSEN, 


23 


at the red petticoat of my mother hanging over the ledge at her feet, 
heaved a sigh that exhausted his lungs, and fell over dead. 

My mother, with that remarkable control over herself which she 
had inherited from her granite father and her marble mother, sat mo- 
tionless for half an hour longer to be assured beyond the possibility 
of error that life was extinct in the monster, before she ventured in the 
extremity of her weakness to descend into the pit, to slake her 
thirst, if possible, by lying down and lowering her head into the 
crevice from which she heard arise ever since she had come to 
the pit the tantalizing gurgle of running water — if not, by sucking 
the blood of the bull through such eyelets in his thick hide she 
might be able to cut with her scissors-blade ; and to satisfy her hun- 
ger by devouring the tongue of the great beast, on which she had 
been feasting her famished eyes for so many days, to get strength 
to climb out of the pit. 

How very weak my mother was she did not know until she 
essayed to rise from the sitting posture she had maintained so long ; 
but after several attempts she succeeded, and stimulated by the ex- 
ertion and the certainty now of obtaining food and drink and escap- 
ing with her double life to her husband and sister — and poor Mrs. 
Iddings, who was ever in her mind as one of the principal sufferers 
in her misfortune, she let herself down backward over the ledge, her 
hands and arms pressed against the floor of the tunnel and her feet 
finding an assisting hold in the scorings made by the infuriated bull, 
till they were set firmly on the floor of the pit. 

She then went to the crevice in which the water was flowing, but 
she could not reach it with her hand. She saw where it was, how- 
ever, and her resourceful mind though weakened with her body was 
still intact. She took up the petticoat that had slain the bull, and 
having lowered the skirt into the stream, she drew it up a few min- 
utes afterward and held it to her lips and sucked the life-giving fluid 
till her brain grew dizzy in the bewilderment of delights occasioned 
by its rapid absorption into her blood. She sat on the ground, and 
dipped and sucked again and again till she felt strong enough to cut 
off a part of the bull’s tongue with her scissors. She succeeded in 
removing the tip, and hurriedly lifted it to her lips, the sweetest 
morsel of her life. Another bite — a third— a fourth— a fifth — 

She heard an alarming sound at her side, and turned— to look into 
the eyes of a wolf-like dog which had jumped into the pit to share 
her feast. She rose to her feet, when the dog intimidated by her size 
and stature, fled to the opposite side of the pit and cowered in evi- 
dent fear and began to howl. 

Emboldened by this, my mother stooped and snipped off a sixth 


24 


JANE JANSEN. 


bite from the bull’s tongue. Then a seventh — an eighth — and a 
ninth — 

When a pack of a score or more of wild dogs, attracted by the 
howling of the first, came bounding down till the pit seemed to be 
filled with the savage creatures, barking, yelping, snarling, and, em- 
boldened by their numbers and the passive attitude of my mother, 
getting closer and closer, till one, snapping at her, carried off in his 
teeth, a patch of her gown. 

She looked around for a means of escape. She saw one and only 
one ; and she took it the instant of its recognition at any hazard 
of undergoing a continuation of the horrors from which so recently 
she had escaped. 

It was the mouth of the lava-sewer above the carcass of the bull, 
the awful cavern which had been yawning at her across the pit for 
the past three days. 

Taking up her petticoat for the third time as an instrument of de- 
liverance, she swung it about her and drove the dogs into a semi- 
circle around her sufficiently far for her to get upon the carcass of the 
bull, and thence, after another repulsion of the savage beasts by 
swinging her weapon of flame-colored wool, to clamber into the 
cavern. 

Satisfied with the bull before them, the wild dogs made no attempt 
to follow my mother, and proceeded at once to tear it to pieces. But 
my mother, fearful that they would pursue her, hurried into the cav- 
ern until her steps were stayed about twenty yards from its mouth by 
a crudely built wall of pieces of lava carried into the tunnel by 
human hands and doubtless for a human purpose. 

“ But what ? ” queried my mother, with the recognition of the 
work of a fellow being. “ No matter. It is an evidence of human- 
ity, here in the past and may be in the future, to rescue my double 
life from the awful dangers with which it is encompassed. There is 
hope; and I will not yield. Happy, happy be the human being 
who has laid up the stones to enable me to struggle on till I sink to 
rise no more — but not in despair ! ” 

She made an opening in the wall, passed through it, and closed it 
again by replacing the stones. 

“ There now, I am safe from the wolves. Humanity has come to 
my rescue, and I will be saved.” 

There was still some water in the skirt of her petticoat and my 
mother, sitting down sucked it, till she sank into a dreamless sleep, 
in which she remained, it appears, until the afternoon of the follow- 
ing day. She awoke refreshed and set out at once to explore the 
tunnel lor an outlet to escape to the upper world. 


JANE JANSEN. 


25 


In a short time, her foot striking something movable on the 
floor, she stooped and took it in her hand. It was a human skull. 
A shudder went through her blood, as she recognized by the sense 
of touch the unmistakable hrainbox of a human being. She let it 
fall with an opening of the hand in instinctive revulsion. 

A few steps further, another skull ; and then a third. 

She had walled herself within a tomb. 

But seeing a dim light ahead, she kept on and came upon a de- 
composing human carcass in rags. The stench arising from it was 
extreme, but my mother, holding her petticoat to her nose and 
mouth with one hand and drawing aside her gown with the other, 
that it might not come in contact with the corpse, passed on. 

A few steps further, she descried a second corpse in incipient 
decay — a bloated, ghastly, and distorted thing with scarcely a trace 
of humanity about it. 

And still a few paces further, the seeming corpse of a hideous 
Hawaiian woman in a sitting posture — her head bent forward on her 
drawn up knees, her skin blotched with disease — the most human 
thing about her being her hair hanging in ragged locks down her 
back and over her knees. 

My mother stood transfixed with horror. Her blood ran cold. 
Her scalp began to creep. Her heart beat so feebly it seemed about 
to cease. 

At length under the agonizing impression that the woman before 
her had been buried alive and was not yet dead, and that she pre- 
figured her own fate in the awful tomb in a feV hours more, she 
spoke in scarcely articulate gasps — 

“ Woman ! move, speak ! if you are still among the living ! that 
I may minister to you in your awful wretchedness, and you to me 
in mine, that we may live together in human sympathy a little lon- 
ger — and die together in the end.” 

The seeming corpse raised her head and revealed an indescribably 
horrible visage, and enquired in a feeble husky voice — 

“ Who are you ? ” 

My mother told her in a few words. 

“ How came you here ? ” 

My mother told her. 

“ Then you do not know where you are and who are the dead 
around you, and what I am, the dying before you ? ” 

“ I do not further than that I among the dead and the dying, in a 
tomb from which there appears to he no escape.” 

“ Then shrink not while I tell you. You are in a tomb from 

D 


26 


JANE JANSEN. 


which there is no escape except by the way you came, by piercing 
the stone wall again and re-entering the pit where you encountered 
the wild bull and the dogs. There, you may ascend the walls by 
piling up the scattered pieces of lava in the pit ; and having gained 
the top of the tunnel, by following the lava flow downward toward 
Hilo for a mile, you may see to your right and left the grass huts of 
some poor natives. Go to them without fear. They speak your 
language as well as I, having been taught by American teachers. 
They are humane and hospitable ; and they will give you food and 
drink and take you to your friends, provided that } T ou do not let 
them know by any word or deed that you have been further in 
your ascent of the lava tunnel than the pit where you escaped from 
the bull and the dogs. 

“ Now, summon all the strength you possess after the trials you 
have undergone, and I will tell you further. 

“ I am a dying leper. The dead behind you are lepers. You are 
in a tomb of lepers — a secret tomb known only to the natives who 
dwell in the grass huts of which I have spoken. The government 
endeavors to collect all the lepers in the kingdom and confine them 
in one place, on the little island of Molokai ; but many of the na- 
tives love their kindred so dearly that they will not give them up to 
the agents of the government, and feed them in hidden places as 
long as they live, comfort them in a thousand ways in their awful 
affliction and conceal their remains in secret places like this 
when they die, in order that the discovery of the dead bodies 
may not lead to the detection and punishment of the transgressors 
of the law. A few days ago — how long exactly I do not know, I 
thought I was about to die and begged my friends to bring me 
hither and leave me to my fate. They did so. I sat down resign- 
edly where you see me now. I did not move for a long time. At 
length I moved my hand, and found a bowl of poi at my side. I ate 
it. Life is sweet even to the most loathsome of lepers. But I am 
resigned to my fate, and in a day or two, at the farthest, I will pass 
from a dreamless sleep into death. For many years I have been 
dead to all the world except my loving children ; and I am dead to 
them now — a fading memory, nothing more. 

“ Now, go, most wretched of women. Go back to the wall and 
remain there till the wild dogs have devoured the bull and run away. 
Then crack the bones they have left behind them and suck out the 
marrow and drink of the water in the crevice again, climb out of 
the pit, go to the huts, and the blessings of a dying leper in a lava- 
sewer of Hawaii attend you through a long and happy life to the 
grave. 


JANE JANSEN. 


27 


“ Go, woman, go ! In the name of all that is dear to you, go ! 
Your husband! Your unborn babe! Do you not know — do you 
not understand that you are in the midst of the most awful pollu- 
tion known to mankind ? Do you not know that you are breathing 
death of the most horrible character to yourself — to your friends — 
to all who may come in contact with you?” 

“ I will not leave you,” said my mother calmly. “ Leper though 
you be, you are human ; and your infinitely greater misery has 
annihilated mine. Life is still sweet to you, and since you have 
given me strength, I can minister to you. Here, I have a flannel 
petticoat in my hand. As you sit it will cover you from head to 
foot and keep the little warmth you have within and about you. 
Then will I gather the bones of the bull and crack them and eat with 
you of the marrow, and draw water from the crevice, and we shall 
both live.” 

My mother advanced a step to place the petticoat over the head 
and shoulders of the leper, when the emaciated monster of disease 
arose to her feet, and, extending her fingerless hands towards my 
mother, forbade her approach. 

“ Woman ! woman ! you are mad ! Away ! You shall not touch 
me ! You shall not live to die like me ! ” 

The leper stood a sublimity of loathsomeness. 

But for a moment. 

The effort exhausted the vital resources of her mutilated and ema- 
ciated body. 

She fell at the feet of my mother. 

A stillness of stone succeeded. 

The petticoat dropped from the hand of my mother and covered 
the naked back and shoulders of the corpse. 

My mother turned and fled back to the wall across the tunnel and 
sank insensible. The supreme agony of her existence had been ex- 
perienced and she lay as one of the dead in the tomb of the lepers. 

But she was not dead ; and when she recovered from her swoon, 
the struggle for existence began in her anew. 

She removed a stone from the wall — a second— a third — a fourth. 
She looked through the opening and in the light that came from the 
mouth of the cavern she saw within reach a bone of great size. She 
drew it through the opening. Then, having rebuilt the wall to pro- 
tect her from the wild dogs, which she feared might return to the 
bone, she began to gnaw at the ligaments attached to it and suck 
the rounded processes ; when, turning the bone convulsively in her 
hand, she discovered, to her inexpressible joy, it was split— possibly 
broken by the fall of the bull into the pit— and that she could ex- 


28 


JANE JANSEN. 


tract the marrow by parting the fracture with a blade of her scissors 
and sucking the nourishing substance through the opening. 

A half hour sped — an hour, perhaps, while my mother was en- 
gaged in extracting the marrow' from the bone of the bull. She then 
fell asleep, to be awakened some time after by the sound of some- 
thing heavy falling near her in the cavern. Cautiously prying 
through the chinks of the wall, she saw the shadowy outlines of a 
gigantic human being engaged in tearing down the wall. 

“ Congo ! ” said my mother, “ you have saved us ! ” and sank into 
another swoon. 

The big negro shouted, and whirled about, and laughed and cried 
in a perfect tornado of emotion. Then, having torn down a great 
part of the wall, he took up in his brawny arms the insensible body 
of his beloved mistress and carried my mother out into the pit', 
where he laid her down gently : her body in the sunshine, and her 
head in the shadow of the western wall. 

The gigantic savage then bent over her to ascertain if she w r ere 
alive or dead. She was warm. She breathed faintly. She lived — 
but, apparently from her wasted and haggard appearance, in the last 
stage of exhaustion from starvation and exposure. He took up her 
scissors, which had fallen from her pocket as he descended into the 
pit with her, and punctured the flesh of his left arm with one of the 
pointed blades ; and when the blood began to flow from the wound, 
with a patch, torn from her gown, he applied the crimson fluid to 
her lips. A slight reaction became perceptible in the face of my 
mother. He rolled the patch together into a teat, and, having satu- 
rated it with his blood, he parted her teeth and put it into her 
mouth. Another sign of awakening appeared. The jaws closed and 
held the teat fast, and the blood being diffused in my mother’s 
mouth, in a few minutes she made an effort to swallow and opened 
her eyes. 

On the return of consciousness, my mother taking the bloody teat 
from her mouth and seeing the blood trickling from the wound in 
the arm of Congo, realized what the faithful negro had done to re- 
store her, and remembering the African ceremony of establishing 
kinship among strangers, smiled faintly and said — 

“ Henceforth, Congo, you and I have the same blood in our veins, 
are brother and sister ; and should my unborn babe survive this 
awful extremity to which we have been reduced together, you shall 
be to my offspring, to the day of your death, Uncle Congo, and share 
in our common lot.” 

But scarcely had she uttered these words than she realized with 
alarm that the gigantic negro, who had fed her with his blood, was 


JANE JANSEN. 


29 


in the incipient stages of insanity. His eyes rolled in a way and 
flashed a peculiar fire she had never seen before. His muscles 
twitched, and his hands convulsively opened and closed. The poor 
fellow’s sufferings, in searching for her night and day and possibly 
with as little food and drink to sustain him as my mother had ob- 
tained, had been extreme ; and while his body had borne the pri- 
vation and exertion, his mind, unused to the rack of anxiety and 
worry amid the tumults of emotion, had given way. 

What was to be done ? 

“ Anything — everything, to keep him calm and let him sleep as 
soon as possible, after eating and drinking,” my mother said to her- 
self. Then, addressing him quietly, and using words, with which 
he was familiar, she said, “ Congo, you are hungry and so am I. 
Gather these big bones that are lying around us and crack them with 
stones so that we can get the marrow in them, and eat a good big 
dinner. . . . There, that will do for the bones. Now, take this 

skull of the bull that has died here and smash it if you can, so that 
we can get at the brain of the brute and eat it too. . . . Now, 

we have enough for a feast. . . . Sit down, good Congo, and eat 

your fill.” 

With great self-denial, my starving mother lifted the precious 
marrow and brain to her lips, and, taking a little, passed the greater 
portion to the big negro and gently forced into his capacious mouth. 
And when they had eaten all, my mother said to him, “You are 
thirsty and so am I ; and there is a small stream of water away 
down in the crevice in yonder corner, and if you will do what I tell 
you, we can get as much of it as we can drink. Take this half of 
the bull’s skull — it will do for a bucket. Good. Now, take this 
strip which I have torn frt>m my gown, and let it hang down in the 
water till it is wet. Good. Now, draw it up and let the water run 
from it into the bucket. And so keep on until you have it full. 

There, that is done well. Now, take up the skull and 
drink all the water yourself ; and I will draw as much as I want for 
myself. . . . You want more. Well, good Congo, here is a 

bountiful supply. Fill the skull again.” 

And so my mother appeased the hunger and thirst of the starving 
giant, but the victory over the madman was not complete yet. His 
wits were wandering wildly ; and while he did what she bade him, 
it was because, in the disturbed state of his mind, he had no intent 
of his own and his will was in abeyance to be acted on by another’s 
as if he had been mesmerized. 

“ Come, sit down, Congo, by my side,” at length my mother said 
to him. “ We are both tired, and we must rest. And see you have 


so 


JANE JANSEN, 


cut your arm, and it is bleeding, and I must tie it up with my hand- 
kerchief. Then, it will soon get well. And how proud and happy 
you are with your mistress’s best cambric handkerchief tied around 
your big, strong arm. And here on your forehead is dust and dirt. 
You have scraped your woolly head against the roof of the big long 
cave you were in, and the dust and dirt have fallen on your head 
and got into your eyebrows. Close your eyes, now, and keep them 
shut for a long, long time till I wipe off your forehead and cleanse 
your eyebrows with my hand. . . . There, keep them shut. 

. . . Oh, you are so sleepy and so am I. . . . Lay down 
your head and go to sleep.” 

The wile of my mother succeeded. The madman slept. And the 
strain being removed from my mother’s mind, she sank into a sweet 
and refreshing sleep by the side of the negro. 

My mother awoke first. It was nightfall, and Congo was still in- 
sensible. It is well, she thought, and let him sleep, though the tor- 
ture to her was terrible ; for, her mind being relieved from the ex- 
actions of her immediate surroundings, she began to think of her 
husband and sister, and Mrs. Iddings, and reprove herself for keep- 
ing them in suspense and distress any longer than was absolutely 
necessary. The means for their relief and her deliverance were at 
hand and she must avail herself of them. But it might not be safe 
to awaken Congo before the functions of his feeble mind were re- 
stored to a normal condition ; and rather than risk the well-being of 
all again, she determined to await his awakening at the call of his 
own nature. This occurred about midnight, as my mother inferred 
from the stars; and greatly to the encouragement of my mother, the 
gigantic African was calm in mind and strong in body sufficiently 
for her to make the attempt. She discovered, too, that the negro’s vis- 
ion was much better than her’s, and that where she was timid in the 
darkness he was confident. She did not know that the negroes as a 
race are nocturnal in their habits to a remarkable degree; but she 
soon recognized the fact that Congo was not concerned in the least 
about the darkness in which they were enveloped and could discern 
objects on the floor of the pit which were absolutely invisible to her. 

He drew of his own accord a supply of water for both. Then tak- 
ing her by the hand, and preceding her with cautious hand and foot, 
he led her from crag to ledge and from ledge to crag along the 
southern wall of the pit until they came to the surface of the great 
lava flow. My mother, knowing the course to pursue from the 
direction of the lava-conduit, the walls of the pit, and the stars, 
waited a moment on the brink to test the judgment of the guide to 
whom she was about to entrust the fate of so many persons. With- 


JANE JANSEN, 


31 


out hesitation — without so little as a glance around him, he took 
the right course as the most familiar way in the world, and my 
mother was satisfied. That was the roof of the lava-sewer which 
she had ascended, and which, being the most recent outflow in the 
neighborhood, was comparatively free from ferns and other plant 
growths and the safest to travel by day or night, albeit rough and 
craggy in the extreme. 

For several hours they trudged along slowly, my mother clinging 
for support and safety to the arm of Congo. At length, exhausted, 
she sank to the earth and wavered between insensibility and semi- 
consciousness, The gigantic negro took her up in his arms and 
carried her a short distance. Then, having rested, he took her up 
again. And so he continued, until about an hour before daybreak, 
when he laid her down at full length on the lava, and sat down by 
her side. He began to doze ; but he was on guard and anxious, and 
while his body was relaxed in slumber his mind was fitfully awake. 

He heard the foot falls of horses and the champing of bits. He 
heard the voices of men and the movements of their dismounting. 

“ We can go no further until the horses can see where to put their 
feet,” said one of the voices — that of Mr. Iddings. “ This field of 
broken lava is filled with cracks and crevices which are so many pit- 
falls to them, and they avoid them by stepping only on the bare 
lava. If ridden after dark into this field further than this they 
would become panic-stricken and refuse to go a step further. Even 
now, having had their legs brushed by a few fern-fronds, they are 
trembling with apprehension. . . . You can drop your rein. 

You need not fear your horse will run away. He will not stir a step 
till broad daylight. Come, let us get on the back of the last of the 
big lava flows which have come down from Mauna Loa, and wait as 
patiently as we can. The negro was seen last wandering up this 
flood, and we must ascend it, too, to find the faithful fellow who, I 
doubt not, now is starving to death in some hole into which he has 
fallen.” 

“ You are right,” said the other of the two voices — that of Skipper 
Jansen. “ We must wait, but not a moment longer than is nec- 
essary. It is now the dawning of the eighth day since my poor 
wife wandered out to die, and the seventh since the faithful negro 
has been seeking her grave — without food — without drink — without 
hope of finding anything by which her wolf-gnawed bones could be 
recognized, save a patch of her clothing, a scrap of her shoe, a but- 
ton, or ring. But I know what he can endure, and I believe we shall 
find him alive and be able to restore him, as we did when we took 
him first from the raft, even if we should not come upon him for a 


32 


JANE JANSEN. 


day or two yet. How his love for my wife has endeared the black 
giant. I am sure I shall weep like a child when we find him, and 
kiss him, and hug him to my heart in an uncontrollable transport of 
joy and gratitude. Hello ! what’s that, Iddings? It is not a lava 
crag — I saw it move — as sure as the world l did ! ” 

“ I see nothing, Skipper.” 

“ That may be, Mr. Iddings ; but you haven’t been staring into the 
night for a life time as I have ; and I assure you I can see something 
not twenty feet from us that has the shadowy semblance of a colossal 
figure in a sitting posture and by its side the outline of a woman 
lying at full length on the lava ! Oh, it must be — do not hold me — 
it must be ” — 

“ No, Skipper, no. Your imagination is excited and what you see 
is behind your eyeballs and not before. You must be calm, or you 
will go crazy. I will not let you move a step, and to wake you from 
th£ nightmare that has seized you in your exhausted condition, I 
will shake you and shout in your ear.” 

The shout of Mr. Iddings — the voice of a stranger, to the ear of 
the black savage quivering on the brink of insanity, tumbled 
him over the frightful precipice in an instant. He sprang to his 
feet and uttered such a demoniac scream of defiance as to make even 
the brave hearts of Skipj^er Jansen and Mr. Iddings shudder. Then, 
advancing against them and revealing his gigantic stature and his 
uplifted threatening hands against the lightening horizon, he drove 
them back in affright ; and taking up a great fragment of lava in his 
hand, .and clacking his teeth together in a fearfully significant sav- 
age defiance, he stood between my father and mother an insur- 
mountable barrier as horrible and ghastly as ever arose between a 
husband and wife. 

“ Congo ! Congo ! It is I, Skipper Jansen ! ” cried out my father 
from a safe distance, in an agony of bewilderment and woe. 
“ Don’t you know me ? Let me go, I beseech you, to the dead body 
of my wife ! It is I, Skipper Jansen ! It is I, Skipper Jansen ! ” 

But the giant still stood in a menacing attitude with the lava in 
his hand, alternately screaming and talking explosively in his Afri- 
can language and clacking his teeth. 

When, my mother having awakened from her stupor and discov- 
ered that the negro had become crazed by the approach of some- 
thing or somebody that endangered his precious charge, and then 
having recognized the voices of her husband and Mr. Iddings and 
realized the situation, rose and quietly came up behind Congo and 
gently took hold of his uplifted arm, and said to him kindly and 
soothingly, u Congo, throw down the stone, and take me up in your 


JANE JANSEN. 


33 


arms. They are gone and cannot hurt us. Take me up and let us 
go. . . . There, that’s a good fellow. Now, let me talk to these 

men. They do not understand you.” 

My mother then addressed my father and told him that the gigan- 
tic negro was insane but under her control, and that he must not ap- 
proach them and do as she said. 

My father, however, when he heard my mother’s voice was in re- 
ality a madman himself, and was prevented from rushing to her 
only by the strength of Mr. Iddings, who had thrown his arms 
around him and held him by sheer force. 

u Oh, my beloved ! my beloved ! ” my father cried in a tempest of 
emotion; and dragging Mr. Iddings along with him with his super- 
ior strength, he stopped only on his approach to my mother in the 
arms of the crazy African when she commanded him — 

“ Stop, Skipper Jansen, do not come a step nearer if you would 
save my life,” said my mother clearly and distinctly. “ Congo, who 
has found me and has brought me here is insane for want of food 
and sleep, and must not be thwarted by you or anybody in his pres- 
ent condition. As I have said, you must do exactly as I say and all 
will be well, for I can control him when another would make 
him worse. If you have any food with you, leave it and go away 
for a little while until we have eaten it. Then, bring my sister with 
clothing and more food and leave us to manage ourselves, and 
Congo. Skipper, Skipper Jansen, do you not hear me ! Then, must 
I address Mr. Iddings, and bid him interpose for the sake of the 
lives of your wife and unborn babe and their heroic savior, this poor 
starving negro in whose arms I am upheld in your hearing and 
sight ! ” 

This last appeal went to the understanding as well as the heart of 
my emotional father. He desisted in his struggles with Mr. Iddings 
to go to my mother at any risk, and burst into tears ; and in a few 
minutes Mr. Iddings conducted him to the horses where they took 
from their packsaddles the food prepared for themselves and Congo 
in view of their finding him in want. Mr. Iddings then left the food 
where my mother directed ; and having assured her that my father 
had become calm and amenable to reason, he said he would leave 
him concealed in the neighborhood, and return with the horses to 
Hilo, about three miles distant, and bring her sister with clothing for 
herself and Congo as my mother had directed. 

The day had not dawned enough yet to see the actual physical 
condition of my mother ; and, from the tone of her voice, both my 
father and Mr. Iddings were under the impression that she had 

E 


H 


JANE JANSEN: 


found in some Way or other Shelter and sustenance and practically 
Was unaffected Seriously during her mysterious absence. All her so- 
licitude^ moreover, appearing for Congo rather than herself con- 
firmed the impression made by her voice and command of the situa- 
tion; My father, accordingly, went into concealment much more 
readily than he would have done had he known the truth, and Mr. 
Iddings galloped off to Hilo with a report so favorable as to exceed 
the limits of acceptance by my aunt and Mrs. Iddings and have 
approximately the effect of the reality unknown to him. 

“ You do not know my sister,” said my aunt to Mr. Iddings. 
“ She might be dying and you would never know it from her speech 
and solicitude for others. Indeed, from what you report, I am con- 
vinced that she is in such an extremity that when aroused and 
alarmed by the actions of her husband and Congo, she became un- 
conscious of being a body susceptible to suffering or a mind subject 
to doubt and delusion and existed only as an intent for the welfare 
of others. It behooves us to provide for the worst — a litter and car- 
riers for her removal in the easiest manner possible, in addition to 
the supplies of clothing and food which she requested.” 

My aunt’s advice was taken ; and in a short time she and Mr. Id- 
dings were in the saddle on their way back to the lava flow with pro- 
visions and clothing, while an enthusiastic throng, comprising sail- 
ors from the several ships in the harbor and both foreign-born and 
native citizens of Hilo, followed with litters for both my mother 
and her heroic African deliverer. 

When my mother, on the alert for the coming of my aunt and 
Mr. Iddings, saw them at a distance, she said to Congo before he 
was aware of their approach. “ Now, Congo, we have eaten and 
drank enough. Take me up in your arms and let us go, and we will 
soon come to my sister. You love my sister, do you not, Congo ? ” 

“ Yes,” replied the savage, with a vague comprehension of what 
my mother was saying. 

“ My sister has always been as good to you as I have been. She 
was the first to call you Congo. And you will be glad to see her 
again — and hear her laugh and sing — will you not ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And you will know her, will you ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And you will hold me tight in your arms and not let me fall 
when we meet, will you ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ And you will not try to scare her away when she comes with 
another breakfast for us and clean clothes, will you ? ” 


JANE JANSEN. 


35 


“ No.” 

Then, raising her voice so that my aunt might hear her as she 
emerged from the ferns and came alone upon the barren lava-flow, 
my mother said, “ He answers rationally. Approach, dear sister, 
without fear. Call him by his name and speak to him gently. 

. . . Come on, dear sister, it is I — your sister, Helen, in the 

arms of Congo ! Come — come ! Oh, can it be I am changed so my 
sister does not know me ! . . . 1 am dying, Congo. . . . 

Lay me down.” 

The gigantic negro laid her down. My aunt fell at his feet, and 
the sisters lay side by side insensible. The poor savage groaned in 
anguish and despair. But he recognized my aunt and his brain re- 
tained the impression made upon it by her appearance and his san- 
ity remained undisturbed. He sat down to await the recovery of 
the sisters from their swoon and wept. 

My father and Mr. Iddings approached. 

“ The sisters have fainted when they met,” said Mr. Iddings 
quietly. “ And Congo has recognized your sister-in-law and will 
know you now. We may advance with safety.” 

My father, staring at my mother, approached her slowly : his face 
bloodless ; the muscles of his jaws relaxed and his mouth open ; his 
breathing suppressed ; and his knees trembling. 

“ It is not my wife,” he said with a breaking heart. “ It cannot 
be. My wife was large ; this skeleton is small. My wife had auburn 
hair ; this skeleton has hair as white as snow. My wife was soon to 
become a mother ; this white haired skeleton ” — 

“ It is your wife and your unborn babe, alive or dead, Skipper 
Jansen. When she spoke, you recognized her in her voice; while 
she is silent asleep or dead, reduced to a skeleton by her privations 
and blanched by the mental and physical tortures she has endured, 
you do not know her — and I do not wonder. Kneel quietly at her 
side. She breathes, she lives. Kiss her pale lips, Skipper Jansen 
—again — again ; that when she awakens to consciousness and opens 
her eyes, she may look into the eyes of her husband, and when she 
opens her lips to speak, she may utter first the name of her 
husband, Skipper Jansen.” 

In the course of time, my mother and aunt revived. My mother 
and Congo then were fed and clothed, and carried by kind and wil- 
ling hands to Hilo, where they recovered sufficiently to be taken 
aboard “ The Whale-Hawk,” the sails of which soon after were 
spread for her departure. 

In conclusion, a paragraph or two will explain the failure of my 
father and Mr. Iddings in their search after my mother and the sue- 


36 


JANE JANSEN. 


cess of Congo in finding her. The opening of the tunnel having 
been closed by the caving in of the roof, and the heavy rain having 
obliterated all evidence of a recent fracture, the enlarged pit was one 
of many hundreds examined in the wide area of the search of my 
father and Mr. Iddings and gave no clue; and the point at which 
the first of my mother’s signals protruded through a crevice in the 
roof was so far beyond the place where she entered as to exceed the 
possible limits of her wandering in her condition in the opinion of 
her husband and friend. 

Congo, however, not sharing in the conferences of my father and 
Mr. Iddings and the throng of other searchers, induced by sympathy, 
curiosity, the hope of reward, and the like, was not involved in their 
errors and was free to wander further afield ; and when the multi- 
tude gave up the search in the belief that she had fallen into the 
river which flows through Hilo and been swept out to sea, he con- 
tinued in widening semi-circles from the inland limits of the city, 
and at length came upon the first of my mother’s signal flags. He 
recognized it at once, and that it had been thrust up from below — 
from the cavern within the slightly elevated ridge on which he stood. 
He ran along the ridge and soon found the second of the signals and 
divined the significance of the two knots. He continued until he 
had passed all the signals, and inferring that my mother had ex- 
hausted all her resources of signaling kept on along the ridge until 
he came to the pit into which the bull had fallen. Here he found 
the wild dogs gnawing at the bones of the bull, and while he was 
looking down on them in dismay, he espied the patch which one of 
the beasts had torn from my mother’s gown. In an instant he was 
among the dogs and driving them helterskelter with his terrifying 
shouts and more effective hurlings among them of lava fragments 
and bones — one of the latter following a fleeing dog into the tunnel 
into which my mother had fled from the dogs, and splitting against 
the wall across the same, to be found by my mother on her return 
from the dying leper ; and the cunning savage, not finding any hu- 
man bones in the pit among those of the bull, concluded that my 
mother had escaped from the dogs and fled back into the cavern 
through which she had come and which was now open before him. 
With a bound he was in it and stopped not till he had explored it to 
the point where my mother had begun her subterranean wandering. 
He then retraced his steps, crossed the pit, and entered the cavern on 
the other side, and found my mother at the wall as I have related. 
When he threw the bone against the wall, happily to fracture it, and 
enable my mother to get at the marrow as I have said, my mother 
was in the depths of the cavern among the dead and dying lepers * 


JANE JANSEN. 


37 


and happily she had returned to the stone wall and escaped from 
the contagion of the horrible disease, before the coming of the gi- 
gantic negro, to prevent his entering the dangerous tomb — perhaps, 
a little more dangerous to him than to my mother by reason of his 
African blood, albeit both the true European and the African have a 
remarkable race immunity from the disease which ravages especially 
the great division of mankind to which the Polynesian, the Malay, 
the Arab, and the Jew belong. 


IV. 


From the Hawaiian Islands, “ The Whale-Hawk ” proceeded 
northward ; and when the time for my mother’s confinement drew 
near, the vessel was anchored in the harbor of Yokohama, Japan, in 
order that she might have the benefit of one of the best of the phy- 
sicians and surgeons of the Far East, and a kindly, genial, whole- 
souled American gentleman as well, Dr. Chauncey Kiskaddon, whose 
acquaintance my father had made on a previous visit. 

Now my father wished for a son to succeed him in the command 
of his great ship which had realized his fondest hopes and wildest 
expectations, and continue the line of Skipper Jansens indefinitely 
into the future. He dwelt upon the subject so much in his dreams 
by night and day that he came at last to entertain a conviction with- 
out a shadow of doubt that the being about to come into existence 
would prove a boy — and that not an ordinary but an extraordinary 
boy, one who would combine in his imperial excellence all the good 
qualities of all the Jansens, the Laersens, the Stuyvesants, the Gra- 
hams, and the Zampelioses, who have lived under various aliases 
since the Glacial period. From a mysterious entry in the log-book 
of “ The Whale-Hawk,” moreover, it appeared that he entertained 
also another conviction without a shadow of doubt that he would 
be blessed with a sight of the glorious Jansen of the future on the 
first day of the new year. 

At all which my Aunt Melissa was amused greatly and twitted 
him a thousand times a day with the absurdity of his positiveness. 

At one time she said to him, “ Well, well, so may it be that Skip- 
per Jansen turns over a new leaf on New Year’s Day in a new edi- 
tion of himself, carefully revised and improved by the blood of the 
Grahams and the Zampelioses ; but I cannot help lamenting the fact 
that he will be, by reason of his birth in the harbor of Yokohama, a 
subject of the Mikado of Japan, and never can be President of the 


38 


JANE JANSEN. 


United States of America ! ” 

“ Bosh ! ” replied my father; “ what is the helm of state for four 
or eight years, fettered with red tape, goaded by office-seekers, and 
galled by envious and jealous associates, compared with the helm of 
the good ship “ Whale-Hawk,” for a life-time, freedom in every 
breath, 1 as broad and general as the casing air,’ and a field for hon- 
orable action and remunerative enterprise as boundless as the earth- 
enveloping ocean ! ” 

At another time she said to him, “ Tut, tut, Skipper Jansen ; from 
certain symptoms which my sister has revealed to me in confidence, 
I have scarcely a doubt that when the passenger list of “ The Whale- 
Hawk ” is increased, it will be, not by a single boy, but — you know, 
it is hard to get too much of a good thing — by a pair of lovely girls, 
in miniature the counterparts of their charming mother and ador- 
able aunt.” 

“ It is true,” replied my father, with a smile of satiric raillery, 
“ that misfortunes seldom come single ; but against the awful fate 
you predict, I cry in abysmal depths of anguish, Forfend ! forfend ! 
ye powers of the deep, from Davy Jones below to Mother Carey 
above ! ” 

And despite the quizzing and badinage of my aunt, my father 
prepared to celebrate the advent of his son on the first day of the 
new year with all the sea-symbols and ceremonies of a naval vic- 
tory. The brass cannon in the bow of the vessel was loaded with 
powder and wad to the muzzle. All the small firearms were bright- 
ened and put in readiness for instant service. All the bunting of the 
ship, including the full series of signal flags and the homeward- 
bound pennant, so carefully stowed away to announce the happy re- 
turn of the ship, were bent to halyards and held in readiness to be 
flung to the wondering breeze at the word of command. All the 
sailors were in their cleanest togs. An extra ration of brandy and 
soda was distributed among the crew ; and several empty bottles 
were on the desk in the chart-room, where my father received a num- 
ber of callers from the city of Yokohama, to extend to him the usual 
greetings of the New Year, and congratulate him on the birth of the 
glorious son of his ludicrous conviction : among the number, nota- 
bly, the Consul-General of the United States, and the distinguished 
American physician, Dr. Kiskaddon. 

In the latter-named worthy gentleman, my aunt found a ready 
coadjutor in the merry badinage at the expense of my father ; and 
when he, in his official capacity, announced an absolute postponment 
for a day at least of the arrival of the future commander of the 
great whale- ship, under the felicitous title of the Prince of Whales, 


JANE JANSEN. 


39 


she laughed so victoriously and so contagiously that for a moment 
my father turned pale and felt faint as if he had heard in it the 
doom of an overwhelming disappointment. In a moment, however, 
he recovered his equanimity and enthusiasm and replied in the best 
of good humor, “ Well, if I am out of my reckoning by a day, the 
error is more apparent than real ; for in the course of my seafaring 
life for a quarter of a century, I have crossed the one hundred and 
eightieth degree of longitude so often, that either gaining or losing a 
day by the direction I was going, it is possible and very probable 
that I am now ahead of time by a day and the Prince of Whales in 
reality is not due until to-morrow.” 

My father then, having ordered his gig, went ashore, and after the 
lapse of several hours, returned with a very uncertain pair of legs 
and an affected manner which revealed only too plainly that condi- 
tion of intoxication which is known among sailors — and land-rats as 
well as water-rats — as “ half seas over.” One of the sailors, who 
had accompanied him ashore, carried in his arms a large bundle of 
colored paper; and as he was commanded by my father, he laid it 
on the deck and unfolded it with great care before the eyes of my 
aunt. 

“ There ! ” said my father triumphantly, looking up from the col- 
ored paper into the eyes of my aunt ; “ what do you think of 
that ? ” 

“ I do not know what to think of it,” replied my aunt ; “ for I do 
not know what it is.” 

“ I will absolve you from the darkness (hie) of ignorance and en- 
lighten your understanding, noblest of your sex,” said my father 
with mock gravity and condescension, taking hold of one of the 
sheets of the vessel to prevent his sinking to the deck. “We are in 
Japan ; and here as elsewhere in civilized and savage countries, the 
ancient rule of propriety obtains which bids us do (hie) in Rome as 
the Romans do. Now, here in Japan when a son is born to an ap- 
preciative father, in the expression of his joy and well-wishing for 
the success in life of his child, he hoists above the house-top the 
effigy in colored paper of a colossal shark — saying in the symbol to 
all the world in sight, ‘ As is the shark in the world of waters, where 
the big fish eat the little fish and the little fish eat the minnows and 
the minnows eat mud, so be my son among his fellow-men, in the 
eternal struggle for existence ! ’ So, to-morrow, when the Prince of 
Whales shall have appeared, (hie) I will hale to the mast-head this 
paper bag, which when filled with the wind flowing through its 
hoop-distended mouth, will take unto itself the semblance of a shark, 
big enough and savage enough in its bloody hues, to swallow T at a 


40 


JANE JANSEN, 


gulp the master and crew of “ The Whale Hawk,” and a certain (hie) 
sweet and witty woman aboard just to sugar and spice the whole for 
easy digestion.” 

“ What,” exclaimed my aunt, with an air of offended dignity and 
mock reproof; “will you, Skipper Jansen, who are so desirous of a 
worthy son to succeed you, and hand down your honorable name to 
unborn generations — will you hoist to the truck of u The W hale- 
Hawk ” a painted paper bag of wind to symbolize this son of your 
dearest hopes — the ultimatum of exalted manhood 1 And in addi- 
tion, Skipper Jansen, will you give unto this painted paper bag of 
wind streaming at the masthead the remotest semblance to a shark 
in the expression of your heart of hearts that your darling son 
among his fellow-men may possess the characteristics of this terrible 
tyrant of the deep ! ” 

“ Even so,” replied my father, making his whole body rigid and 
erect in the animation of the moment and in emphasis of his deter- 
mination. “ I am in Japan, and it is the custom of the country. 
Even so ; and were I in China, where the Bengal tiger is held in 
the same estimation as the shark in Japan, I would float at the 
masthead, in the expression of my exultation and aspirations on 
the eventful occasion of the birth of a son, the banner of the Celes- 
tial Empire, on which is emblazoned the so-called Dragon, but which 
in reality is an artistic idealization to an extreme degree of the four- 
footed thunderbolt of Asia, the Bengal tiger. Even so; and were I 
in Rome where the lion and the elephant have been regarded as the 
ultimates respectively of pow r er and majesty, from the days of the 
ancient kingdom to the present, I would express the feelings of my 
heart and the hopes of my brain, in welcoming into the world a 
first-born son, by giving him the name of one or other of these 
mighty beasts, either Leo, the Latin for lion, or Caesar, the Punic for 
elephant.” 

“ It seems then,” queried my aunt, “ that the wide world over the 
engrossing aim of man masculine is to be a monster — a beast com- 
pounding man and shark, man and tiger, man and lion, man and 
elephant, or the like, after the fashion of the centaurs and sphinxes of 
the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and the monkey-headed Hanu- 
mans of the modern Hindoos? ” 

“ Yes,” responded my father; “the wide world over the dominat- 
ing idea in the brain of man is to possess to a preeminent degree 
such virtues, qualities, or characteristics as assure success in the 
struggle for existence — a glorious victory in the battle of life. It is 
an idea coextensive with the organic world, intensified in the most 
highly developed of the beasts of the earth, pari passu with their 


JANE JANSEN. 


41 


evolution from a simple to a complex form, and specialized in the 
masculine gender to the good and beneficent end that while the wife 
and mother is helpless in the throes and all-involving exactions of 
maternity, the husband and father is armed against the world — fear- 
lessly and defiantly turning a cast-iron brow to the multitudinous 
hosts of life-assailing evils and proudly displaying on his banners 
afloat above the citadel of life,- the shark, the eagle, the tiger, the 
lion, the elephant, or whatsoever other fish of the sea, fowl of the air, 
or beast of the field that may symbolize in his mind a victor ! ” 

Perhaps for the first time in the course of my father’s existence 
for one and thirty years, did he, in the expression of this compre- 
hensive view 6f the relation of the sexes and the struggle that has 
been going on, consciously or unconsciously, in the mind of man- 
kind for ages to formulate their thoughts and feelings in symbols, 
words, or other devices — or, in other words, to turn themselves inside 
out into intelligible alter egos — for the first time in his life, did my 
father, in the utterance of this brief address to my aunt, rise above 
the foothills of the Himalayas of humanity and gleam in the rari- 
fied ether of the icy summits of Kinchingunga and Deodonga. 
Emotionally aroused by his solicitude for and sympathy with my 
mother in her anguish, physically stimulated by brandy, and men- 
tally animated, expanded and exalted by the intellectual antagonism 
of my Aunt Melissa, he stood for an instant transfigured in her 
sight — a man she had never dreamed of Skipper Jansen’s being the 
embodiment — indeed, a man such as she had never conceived of before 
— a man who could overwhelm her with a raison d'Ure for himself, 
primarily, and secondarily, for all the seeming absurdities involved in 
his actions, in counting so confidently his chickens before they were 
hatched, and in preparing to float at the masthead on the morrow a 
fantastic simulacrum of a shark, a wind-filled bag of painted paper 
forty feet in length ! 

But half realizing what she did in her surprise and admiration, 
she bowed profoundly before my father in silent but significant rec- 
ognition of the height to which he had risen in himself and her es- 
teem, and returned to the bedside of my mother. 

At twelve o’clock the next day, the second of January, 1870, just as 
the bells were ringing the end of one and the beginning of another 
watch, I was born — a girl ! and the moment Dr. Kiskaddon an- 
nounced the fact, my aunt hastened to report the unwelcome 
tidings to my father. As she approached him, however, she retarded 
her speed, sensitively shrinking from wounding the feelings of the 
man who had assumed so suddenly and so strangely a superior ex- 

F 


42 


JANE JANSEN. 


istence in her estimation ; and as she passed from precipitancy to 
hesitation in her step she faltered from directness to equivocation in 
her speech. 

“ Well, out with it ! ” exclaimed my father, in an explosion of im- 
patience, as he detected in her slackened speed and blushing face a 
tendency to retreat, which he misconstrued to be from the adverse 
position which she had assumed in .their recent rencounters. 

“ Well,” replied my aunt, reluctantly, and seemingly to my father 
in confirmation of the construction which he put on her halting 
action, “ the baby can never be President of the United States of 
America, but ” — 

“ Hurrah ! hurrah ! ” broke in my father, tumultuously. “ Didn’t 
I tell you so, aunty ! Hurrah ! hurrah ! Let go the gun in the bow, 
Jack ; and here, Tom, you lazy lubber, tug away at these halyards 
and hoist to the masthead this glorious ocean-emblem of trium- 
phant manhood, the mighty monarch of the deep, the Shark ! But 
did I not tell you so, Aunty ? Ha ! ha ! Of course he cannot be 
President of the United States of America, being born beyond the 
boundaries of that most glorious nation among the nations of the 
earth, but ” — 

Boom ! went the cannon, and up went the carefully folded paper 
banner to the truck of the main-mast, where, responsive to a peculiar 
jerking manipulation of the halyards, it unfolded, and, rapidly tak- 
ing in the breeze through its open-mouth, rose to a horizontal posi- 
tion and rolled and writhed with a certain semblance to a shark in 
its shape and motion which was recognizable at a glance. 

“ There ! behold the banner of the ocean-born ! the ruler of the 
wind and the wave ! Untrammeled, unconfined, knowing no north, 
no south, no east, no west, and roaming at will round and round the 
circumnavigable globe — he only who can say in truth the earth is 
my heritage and one of the planets of the solar system my footstool, 
my plaything, or what you will ! ” 

“ But ” — broke in my aunt. 

“ Away with your ‘ buts ’ and ‘ ifs ’ — your general and special qual- 
ifiers and detractors — your hipshod halflings, neither fish nor flesh 
nor good red herring. On this glorious occasion only the round, the 
full, and the perfect should be permitted to come into existence in 
thought and find expression in word and action.” 

“ Then, by your leave,” said my aunt, as pale as ashes and quiv- 
ering with a fearful emotion from head to foot, “ permit me to repeat 
what I have said already and to complete my sentence. The baby 
never can be President of the United States of America, but may be 
a President’s wife.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


43 


Mv father stood transfixed by the intelligence : his existence 
seemingly suspended, and his body but a standing monument to his 
departed life. 

“ The baby is a girl,” continued my aunt, with an emphasis of 
truth in her tone and solemnly affected manner that commanded 
conviction. 

The muscles of my father’s jaws relaxed, and his lips parted me- 
chanically. The blood receded from his flushed face, and a percep- 
tible perspiration began to glisten on his pallid brow. He raised his 
right hand tremulously and slowly to his eyes ; and suddenly, his 
look expressing a suspension of consciousness, he staggered back- 
ward, and fell through an open hatchway. 


V. 

In his fall, the left leg of my father became entangled in a bight of 
rope which hung from the side of the hatchway, in such a manner 
as to arrest him in his descent with a twisting jerk by which his 
back w r as wrenched or sprained and his left knee dislocated. The 
nature and extent of the first of these injuries were masked, while 
those of the second were apparent and notable, inasmuch as they re- 
vealed one of the rarest of the several luxations to which the great 
joint of the knee is subject, a complete external rotary dislocation. 
This particular lesion can occur only under peculiar circumstances, 
and as it was the first of its kind ever seen by Dr. Kiskaddon, its 
causation was investigated by him with professional interest and zeal, 
as soon as its reduction had been accomplished and the sufferer 
placed in the most secure position and comfortable condition the cir- 
cumstances would permit. 

At the same time my father, my aunt, and my mother severally 
were considering the accident from an individual point of view. 

My father, as it were awaking from a horrible nightmare, bewil- 
dered, excited, and suffering ineffable anguish, was able nevertheless 
to review fitfully and disconnectedly the causes which brought about 
his calamity and correctly enough to form conclusions. “ Oh, the 
folly of the false positions I assumed ! ” he said to himself while he 
groaned in spirit; “and oh, the folly of maintaining those false po- 
sitions in the face of the judgment and discretion of a child, until I 
became a victim of my own deception, a laughing stock to my 
friends, and a stumbling-block to my own destruction ! — nay, to 
others, perhaps, as well as myself— O agonizing thought ! And was 


44 


JANE JANSEN. 


ever punishment so close upon the heels of folly and merited so 
fully ! Fate ? No ; there is no such thing as fate in the events of 
existence, but cause and effect in an infinity of interacting forms and 
combinations and eternal sequences. And therein lies the secret of 
retribution — of reward and punishment for good and evil actions, 
without further speculation.” Then, after lapsing from a chaotic to 
a more settled and orderly state of mind, he continued, “ I marvel 
not the immediate and apparent instrument by which a notable 
event has been achieved, a disaster brought about, a fault, a crime, 
or a folly committed or punished — the sword of a conqueror, the 
bludgeon of a murderer, or the knife of a guillotine, has been re- 
garded by mankind with an interest akin to veneration and a feeling 
akin to awe.” 

At any rate, if the thoughts here attributed to my father are not in 
fact those which coursed through his troubled brain while he lay on 
his bed of anguish, they approximate closed many remarks he fre- 
quently made afterward in my hearing ; and that they parallel his 
actual thoughts at the time, may be inferred from the words he spoke 
when he beheld me for the first time, held above his staring eyes in 
the hands of my aunt, “ Thou newborn Nemesis — thou, innocent and 
unconscious scourge of the guilty, be thou to me and mine forever 
deodand ! ” 

Then, observing that while the short fine hair which covered my 
head was black, there was a singular patch about an inch in diame- 
ter of pure white hair directly above the median line of my fore- 
head, he shuddered as he said, “ And that blazon on thy brow, my 
child — none had the heart to tell me of it. It is a sign to see and 
shudder at in silence. It is a mother-mark of wretchedness a world 
of words could not express. It is a vital stamp to reappear in thy 
posterity perhaps forever — an ineffaceable hieroglyph impressed upon 
humanity by the horrors of Hawaii. The great priest of nature 
hath selected thee for a special purpose and hath affixed his mark 
upon thee that thou mayest be singled out among mankind and 
achieve the end of thy existence. The suffering thou hast endured 
before thy birth shall not be without a just and full compensation. 
Thou art tabu to nature, my child. Thou art doubly deodand.” 

My aunt was affected greatly by the accident. Sensitive and sym- 
pathetic to an extreme degree, she responded quickly and thoroughly 
to everything she saw and heard ; and, experiencing in the rapid 
accumulation of her sensations and sufferings the second all-involv- 
ing shock of her life, she underwent a corresponding metamorphosis 
— the picture of her existence henceforth containing a background of 
sadness and sorrow as apparent to the observer as the brightest of 


JANE JANSEN. 


45 


smiles and the high lights of enthusiasm and intelligence in the fore. 
When she saw my father disappear in the hatchway, she screamed ; 
when she saw the coil of rope unwind on the deck with accelerated 
swiftness, she held her breath and checked the beating of her heart ; 
and when she heard the crash of my father’s alighting, and that of 
the coil of rope drawn down upon him, she groaned in agony. Then, 
rushing to his assistance, she realized in a mental flash that she was 
involved in the causation of the accident and necessarily must be in 
its effects to the end of time, whatsoever they might be. When 
afterward she saw my father taken up and laid on an improvised op- 
erating table and hospital-couch in the chest-room ; saw the mixture 
of ether and chloroform administered to the limp and ghastly being 
who a few minutes before had been in the perfection of health and 
vigor ; saw the strong canvas bandages of extension and counter-exten- 
sion applied ; the violent efforts of the surgeon and assisting sailors 
in stretching the contracted muscular leg and twisting it in a direc- 
tion opposite to the displacement ; the fracture-box adjusted and 
other immobilizing appliances in anticipation of any sudden move- 
ment of the vessel at anchor in the harbor ; and heard from the lips 
of the surgeon the gravity of the dislocation and the indeterminable 
nature and scope of the spinal and other possible injuries sustained, 
and received from his hands the lotions of lead-water and laudanum, 
the vials and boxes of purgative liquids and anodyne pills, taken 
from the medicine chest of the ship, and a bottle of leeches brought 
from the city of Yokohama, with directions and instructions over 
and over repeated that they might be fixed in her memory — when 
she saw and heard all these acts and utterances, colored by an infin- 
ity of minor incidents and accompaniments, she suffered the tor- 
tures of a self-accusing conscience, pang after pang until the diapason 
of suffering was exhausted with the effect upon her already men- 
tioned. “ Oh, why did I twit and antagonize him in the expression 
of his noble nature — his good and generous manly nature, dreaming 
for the best, hoping for the best, till, blinded by the intensity of the 
sunshine of his vision, he groped and fell, a fool in the eyes of the 
world, a physical wreck for weeks and months — perhaps forever. 
Did I not feel that his seeming folly was wisdom ; and his extrava- 
gance a glorious expression of the freedom of his life, the generosity 
of his nature, and the great powers of his mind and body ever in a 
quiver to find ease in action ? And feeling it in my heart of hearts, 
why did I not recognize the fact in my mind and act accordingly, 
as becomes a woman in the presence of a man whom she admires 
and loves, free from affectation, free from equivocation, free from 
falsehood, and alert and apprehensive to the utmost of her nature to 


46 


JANE JANSEN. 


assure bis welfare ? Oh, why did I not see the precipice at his back ? 
and how could I hesitate and hurl him to destruction ? and how can 
I ever atone for the injury I have done him, my beloved sister, and 
their ocean-born daughter? But whatsoever measure of woe awaits 
these loved ones in the threatening future, be my existence from this 
moment a life of self-sacrifice to soothe and solace, to comfort and 
cheer to the end ! ” 

My aunt realized the fact that a common destiny dated from the 
accident, and however mistaken she was in assuming the sole respon- 
sibility of it, she was sincere in feeling and thought. And how 
faithfully and nobly she fulfilled her vow, the events recorded in the 
following pages may reveal in a measure but never fully save by 
reading sympathetically between the lines as they are written by 
my feeble pen. 

During the excitement which immediately followed the accident, 
my mother was left alone with her new-born babe. Naturally of a 
calm disposition, and having suffered almost to the limits of life in 
Hawaii, and now being exhausted by the throes of labor, she lay in 
passive alarm, silently receiving through her quickened senses an 
infinity of impressions from her troubled environment which were as 
intelligible to her as spoken words. To my aunt accordingly as she 
entered the cabin to acquaint my mother with the particulars of the 
accident and present to her the most hopeful view of the calamity 
she could conjure up in her agitation, my mother, placidly but with 
the emphasis of authority, said, “ Not a word, my dear sister ; I 
know all. Devote yourself wholly to his relief — Jane Jansen and 
her mother are doing well, and send the tenderest sympathies of a 
daughter and wife in chains in prison to a father and husband in 
pain and distress in the outside world.” 

“Jane Jansen ! ” came unconsciously from the lips of my aunt. 

“ Yes,” replied my mother, “ had the babe come into the world a 
boy, in accordance with the heartfelt wishes and the heart-inspired 
expressions of my husband in word and deed, he would have been 
called Jan Jansen, the sixth in an unbroken line of skippers of that 
name ; but the babe being born a girl, Jane must be substituted for 
Jan, and everything else be done to lighten the load of his disap- 
pointment— for life, perhaps. Now, go to his relief, with words of 
cheer and kisses of affection and sympathy from Jane and her 
mother.” 

A few days afterward, when self-accusation had affixed its seal 
upon the face of my aunt, and a look of sadness and sorrow was be- 
ginning to settle there, my mother said to her, “ Do not speak, I see 
it all. The accident is serious, and its consequences possibly calam- 


JANE JANSEN. 


47 


itous. You say to yourself, ‘ Had his wife instead of his sister-in-law 
been in his presence, he would not have fallen,’ and you accuse 
yourself of being the cause of the accident and suffer accordingly. 
It is true, that had I been present the accident would not have hap- 
pened — could not, in fact ; for the peculiarities of my being so affect 
Skipper Jansen that in my presence and under my unconscious in- 
fluence over him, instead of being a tangent running off into the 
absurdities of thought and action, he is an arc of a circle of human- 
ity, perfect. He needs me and only me to complete his existence. 
It is that that made us fall in love with each other, mate in love, and 
live in love to this day. And now, just as extravagantly and ab- 
surdly as you believe Skipper Jansen wandered in his dreams and 
vagaries of the future, you wander, my dear sister, in your recollec- 
tions of the past and intermingle self-reproach and remorse. No 
more are you justified in deeming yourself responsible for the acci- 
dent that has occurred than Skipper Jansen was in assuming so pos- 
itively that his unborn child was a son and not a daughter. You 
both in your several characters are wrong and right ; and I take a 
certain pleasure in my bedridden state in being able to discern, more 
clearly than if I were up and in action, your several noble but in- 
complete characters, his as a man’s and yours as a woman’s. Some 
day, my dear sister, yours will be the serenity of happiness which I 
now enjoy — when you will have met your supplemental self, and the 
tangents of your nature bent into arcs, and the eccentricities of your 
husband and self harmonized in a beloved child as I trust those of 
Skipper Jansen and your sister are in this little horror-marked inno- 
cent asleep on my bosom.” 

“ No, my dear sister,” replied my aunt ; “ you are in the wrong — 
and yet, in a measure, you are in the right ; and I cannot tell where 
the one ends and the other begins. But what a comfort to me at 
this moment — nay, in these hours and days of the greatest agony 
I have ever suffered, is your self repose — your motionless body and 
placid mind. The only relief I feel — the only surcease from the 
sufferings I endure, is when I look into your face and partake by re- 
flection of its tranquillity. Then I say to myself, ‘ Ein feste burg,’ 
and feel that as long as I have you by my side, I have the refuge of 
an impregnable mountain height against the evil and anguish which 
environ our existence and ever and anon insidiously are in- 
vading it.” 

“ I doubt not, my dear sister,” said my mother, “ that I am essen- 
tial to your happiness, or to the perfection of your being at present, 
if you will ; as I know you have been to mine, in the past. There 
are few persons in the world who are round and full in themselves. 


48 


JANE JANSEN, 


Hence the more we secrete and seclude ourselves from others, in 
body and mind, the more are we liable to err and evolve into extrav- 
agance, eccentricity and absurdity.” 

“ Undoubtedly as individuals we are fragments of humanity,” re- 
sponded my aunt, u and dependent on one another for our perfec- 
tion, preservation, and perpetuation ; but unhappily for me, I lose 
sight of this philosophic truth the instant I am called into action 
and pass from the purgatory of folly into the inferno of punishment 
before I know what I am doing. I have been a continual smile 
heretofore, and now am in an agony of regret and grief; you have 
been a perpetual severity, and now, confined to your bed and with 
the beloved father of your babe in distress beyond your sight and 
reach, you are at ease in mind and body — incarnate serenity. I do 
not understand it — not fully, at any rate.” 

u And never will,” said my mother, “ until you have, as I this mo- 
ment, asleep on your bosom, a healthy perfect babe, the offspring of 
a true and reciprocated love. For then only will you have evolved 
from the world of fancy into that of fact, and become acquainted 
with the realities of life as such, including yourself, in yourself an 
imperfect organism, abortive, tangential into error and accident, and 
utterly useless, but incorporate in another, a perfect organism, visible, 
audible, and palpable — or sensuously objective in every way, as a 
mother recognizes herself in her offspring. Then only will the strug- 
gle for existence cease and all the conflicting elements of nature be at 
rest, for victory will be incarnate in your arms ; and so be it, the 
child survive the deluge, the lives of father and mother have not 
been in vain.” 


VI. 

The spinal injuries sustained by my father in his fall proved to 
be more serious than the peculiar dislocation of the left knee. As 
he lay immobilized on his back a part of his spinal cord became 
subjected to a gradually increasing pressure ; and in consequence of 
this pressure, he lost all power of motion in his lower limbs. He be- 
came dispirited at once. He might as well be wholly dead as half. 
When my mother was able to come to his bedside, however, he be- 
came resigned to his fate and at length began to entertain a fitful 
hope of recovery. Her snow-white hair, her placid countenance, 
her grave demeanor, and her imperturbable tranquillity of mind 
turned the scale in him to the side of health and happiness in the 


JANE JANSEN. 


49 


future; while the uncontrollably demonstrative nature of my sym- 
pathetic aunt increased the weight in the opposite scale. 

As soon as possible, without endangering the progress made in the 
restoration of his knee, my father was liberated from his box and 
bandages and subjected to a careful examination by Dr. Kiskaddon. 
A slight fracture of the processes of the twelfth dorsal vertebra and 
first lumbar was detected ; and a pressure, sufficient to cause the par- 
alysis, was inferred to be the result of either infiltration or irregular 
bone-growth. 

This diagnosis was revealed to my mother alone and the inability 
of surgery to afford any relief. “ As well cut into the heart with a 
knife as the spinal cord,” concluded the worthy doctor. 

“ I do not think so,” said my mother calmly. 

“You speak, perhaps, not from a knowledge of the subject.” 

“ It is true, I speak not from a surgeon’s knowledge of the sub- 
ject, but from a woman’s knowledge of a surgeon.” 

“ You have confidence in me, then?” 

“ I have.” 

“ I do not know that an operation to remove the injured parts of 
the backbone has ever been performed. The risks run put it beyond 
the pale of the permissible.” 

“ But not the pale of the possible.” 

“ True ; but the risks are not reduced by the assertion.” 

“ They may be, though, by a command of your resources and 
mine. The surgery of savages has relieved pressure on the brain by 
trephining, and otherwise, and I cannot and will not believe that 
pressure on the cord cannot be encountered successfully by the sur- 
gery of the enlightened.” 

“You advise?” * 

“ I do.” 

“ And will assist ? ” 

“I will.” 

“ But he — he is your husband— the father of your babe— he may 
die from the effects of the operation, and you will ” — 

“ Mourn to the day of my death the loss of a good and great man, 
cut off in his prime. But, if you do your part as well as I believe 
you will, and leave the rest to me, he will not die ; and you will 
have the glory of having removed successfully, and for the first time 
perhaps in the history of surgery, a portion of the backbone, for 
your reward, and I, a husband with both legs out of the grave, for 
mine.” 

“ I will attempt the operation.” 

G 


50 


JANE JANSEN. 


‘‘You will perform it.” 

And in due time, (my father having been removed from the ship 
to the hospital in Yokohama, and put in the best condition possible 
to insure a favorable issue from an invasion into the life-pre- 
serves of the spinal cord,) the skilful surgeon exsected the parts of 
the two vertebrae of my father which pressed upon the nervous mat- 
ter of the spine and caused the paralysis of his lower extremities, 
and in doing so performed one of the crucial operations of the ad- 
vanced surgery of to-day known as Laminectomy. 

My mother assisted the surgeon. 

And in due time my father was walking about on two crutches, 
then with a crutch and a cane, and then with a crutch, and deemed 
himself able to command “ The Whale-Hawk ” and go to sea in pur- 
suit of the commercial objects of the cruise. 

On the 15th day of March, accordingly — two and a half months 
from the date of our common destiny, my birth, and the accident to 
my father — the good ship sailed out of the harbor of Yokohama ; and 
how r ever stormy the sea and sky, the hearts of all aboard were 
cheered in the hope that in leaving behind them the harbor of 
Yokohama, as a harbor of horrors second only to that of Hilo, they 
were leaving behind them a world of woe which they would never 
enter again. 

Their hope was delusive. 

In the capture of a large whale off the northern coast of Chosen, 
or Korea, in the latter part of May, my father, while watching the 
chase from the deck became so excited that he dropped his crutch 
and stood without assistance or support for the first time since 
he fell. 

Congo took up the crutch and handed it to my father. 

My father took it and hurled it into the sea. 

A moment afterward, the vessel gave a sudden lurch, and my 
father, in endeavoring to maintain his equilibrium, stepped on his 
left foot ; and his left knee giving way under his weight, he fell heav- 
ily to the deck, and in his struggles to regain his feet, knocked his 
weak knee against an iron stanchion at the corner of the try-works 
amidships so violently that he became limp and faint at once from 
the pain. 

Congo took him up in his arms; and having summoned my 
mother, told her, as well as he could, what had happened. Then, as 
directed by her, he carried my father into the cabin and laid him on 
his bunk. 

My mother and aunt applied such lotions and anodynes as they 
had in store in the medicine chest of the ship, but with little or no 


JANE JANSEN. 


51 


effect in relieving pain and much less in restoring the wounded 
knee to the condition it was in at the time the crutch was thrown 
into the sea. The bruise had passed through the skin, and the great 
processes of the bones which compose the knee joint were affected. 
Necrosis — decay of the bones — set in ; and my mother and aunt, 
with all their stores and all their sacrifices, were incapable of check- 
ing the ravages of the hidden disease. 

To add to the perplexities of the situation, the solicitude of my 
mother so affected the secretion of milk in her breasts, that 1 was de- 
prived of the natural food of a babe, and soon began to pine and 
fret, and go from bad to worse, on such sops and soups as my 
mother and aunt could prepare for me from the variety of food for 
adults at hand, until, it was apparent to all that if I did not get a 
supply of milk in a few days at the farthest, I would cease to be. 

The nearest harbor was that of Gensan, on the northeastern shore 
of Chosen ; and thither my mother directed “ The Whale-Hawk 55 to 
be guided with all the speed possible to the excellent sailing vessel. 

“But,” objected the mate, Jasper Medbury, a well-proportioned 
and remarkably handsome man of two and thirty, who, like my 
father, had been a whaler the greater part of his life and a sailor 
from childhood, “ this Chosen, as it is called properly, or Korea as it 
is known to us, is the most exclusive country in the world. For- 
eigners of all kinds — Japanese and Chinese, as w T ell as Europeans 
and Americans, are forbidden to land on any part of the coast ; and 
should they effect a landing in spite of threat and remonstrance, the 
people of the country are compelled by their jealous government 
to tiee inland and have nothing to do with the intruders under 
frightful penalties — neither trade with them nor communicate with 
them in any way. Besides, the people are warlike, bigger in body 
than the Chinese and much bigger accordingly than the Japanese ; 
and knowing to a man that they are in the last ditch of Asiatic ex- 
clusiveness against the invasions of Europe and America, they are 
jealous in the extreme and not to be trusted. For my part, I would 
rather trust to a rocky ledge to leeward in a storm at night than these 
big green-eyed Asiatic monsters.” 

“ Howsoever,” replied my mother, “ there are fathers and mothers 
among them, and trusting to the common sympathies of humanity, 
I do not fear to go among them and do not doubt that I will find a 
nurse among them for my starving babe, and that without endanger- 
ing the life of any of us any more than we are endangered severally 
at present.” 

“ But the people will flee from you, if they do not resist your 
landing ? ” 


52 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ We will enter the largest town or city we can see on the shores 
of the harbor and overtake the laggards.” 

“ You will not be able to communicate with them. You do not 
know a word of their language, nor does any of the crew ; and that 
which is a sign to you for one thing may be a sign to them for an- 
other. I know that where we take off the hat in the presence of an- 
other, they put it on. Where we shake hands in the expression of 
friendship, they scrupulously avoid the slightest personal contact. 
The right hand is that which wields the weapon of offense and de- 
fense, and the Korean thinks, perhaps, he might as well throw away 
his weapon as put his right hand in that of a stranger who to the 
Korean is always an enemy.” 

“ My baby speaks an universal language and cannot fail to make 
her wants known — even to the beasts of the field ; and if the 
Koreans resist or run away, somewhere on their shores at a safe dis- 
tance from them we will see a herd of cattle and may single out a 
cow and get a supply of milk from her.” 

“ It is true the Koreans have many cattle, but the use of milk is 
unknown among them as an article of diet. They make use of their 
cows as beasts of burden only. While coasting along their inhos- 
pitable shores, I frequently have seen the gentlemen of the country 
traveling astride their cows — the peaked and broad -brimmed horse- 
hair hats and voluminous white robes of the men and the great 
bodies of the cattle making them fantastic and conspicuous.” 

“ If the women flee and the cows are dry, we may find a dog.” 

“ You are right ; and that perhaps without much trouble ; for the 
Koreans generally breed dogs for their flesh and hides as we do 
sheep. All the great divisions of mankind have their several arti- 
cles of diet; and the saying that what is one man’s food is another 
man’s poison is founded in fact/ The people of the north of Europe 
eat the hog especially ; the people of the east and north of Asia, the 
horse and dog ; the people of the south of Europe, the ox ; the peo- 
ple of the South Sea— the Maori of New Zealand and their kindred 
around the world — their fellow men ; and the negroes, the fatty wild 
beasts, the elephant and the hippopotamus in Africa and the ’possum 
and ’coon in America.” 

From all which information about the people of the mysterious 
peninsula of Korea, which at that time was an absolutely sealed 
kingdom to all the world beyond its borders, and from what 
she learned from others of the crew without questioning my father 
and running the risk of exciting his apprehensions, my mother de- 
termined on a course of action — to go where the danger was the 
greatest and meet it with the weakness of a woman and the want of 


JANE JANSEN. 


53 


a starving babe. And, knowing the danger of doubt in sapping a 
determination in the strongest mind, she revealed her plan to none, 
and began to direct the movements of all in order that she might 
carry it out. 

The sun was two hours high when “ The Whale-Hawk ” entered 
the mouth of the harbor of Gensan, and passed the mass of basaltic 
columns which rises near the entrance, the correspondent in the East 
of the Isle of Staffa in the West; when a sailor aloft reported a city 
in the form of a semicircle along the low shore of the southern part 
of the great harbor eight or ten miles distant, and a large fleet of 
Korean fishing-boats before the city. 

“ Steer for the middle of the fleet,” directed my mother. 

“The low shore indicates shallow water,” the mate replied. 
“ A half a mile away — a mile, perhaps, from where a junk floats a 
ship may ground.” 

“ Go as close to the fleet as you can in safety.” 

The ship passed to windward of the conical island which rises 
near the middle of the southern part of the great harbor, and dis- 
plays two colossal characters composed of stones and shells— a warn- 
ing expressed in the hieroglyphics known as well to the Chinese 
and Japanese as the Koreans, and presumably, accordingly,, to all 
the world besides, but happily not to my mother at this critical mo- 
ment to delay her from the execution of her hazardous enterprise. 

Soundings were made continually and at length revealed a dan- 
gerous shoaling. The sails were reefed ; and at the last moment con- 
sistent with the safety of the ship, the great anchor in the bow 
plunged into the water and the vessel swung round in the wind and 
stopped at the end of her iron tether. She lay a third of a mile 
fully from the fishing fleet. 

As soon as possible then a whale-boat was lowered and manned, 
and my mother, with Congo carrying me in his arms, seated in it. 

“ Through the midst of the fishing-boats, to land me in the heart 
of the city as quickly as you can,” directed my mother. 

And in a few minutes the whale-boat was alongside the fleet, and 
the boatswain in vain seeking a gap in the closely crowded boats 
which formed a floating wall before the city. 

My mother rose to her feet on one of the seats of the whale-boat, 
and, supported by a sailor, looked to be convinced from her own ob- 
servations. There was no passage for the whale-boat ; but she saw 
one for herself and Congo by the route taken by the fishermen in 
going to and from the city and the boats. 

She directed the whale-boat to be pulled to the nearest fishing- 
boat ; and while the fishermen were standing motionless in wonder 


54 


JANE JANSEN. 


at the apparition of the white-haired and white-skinned woman and 
the gigantic negro with the puny babe in his arms, two strongly con- 
trasting representatives from the great unimaginable world around 
them, my mother, followed by Congo, climbed into the boat, and 
from it passed to the next, and so on till she came to a long gang- 
way leading from the boats to the shore over a great stretch of shal- 
low muddy water. Thence, stepping up quickly behind an old fish- 
erman with a basket of fish on his shoulder, she followed him from 
plank to plank till she stepped from the last to the solid ground and 
found herself not more than twenty-five paces from the first row of 
houses along the harbor front and before the mouth of apparently 
the principal avenue of the city, though narrow, not more than fif- 
teen or twenty feet in width. Without hesitation she crossed the 
intervening space and entered the narrow street and continued in it 
till her steps were stayed by the solid masses of a strange and wonder- 
ing humanity which gathered around her and Congo at her heels and 
packed so closely about her that she could not move without oppos- 
ing violence to the passive mutes of all ages and both sexes in front 
of her, behind her, and at her sides. She looked appealingly into 
the fabes of the children, the women, and the men ; but she saw only 
the blgnk of wonder in their round immobile countenances, and she 
was ax a loss to know what to do in the unlooked for emergency of 
absolute inaction — the Koreans neither resisting her nor running 
away from her, but staring and gaping around her in silence like so 
many fishes fantastically masked and clad as so many human 
beings. 

At length on the outskirts of the crowd in front of her, my mother 
detected a little agitation in the face of one, who, from his head -gear 
and dress which differed from those around him, she deemed to be a 
magistrate of the city or officer of the government. As the agitation 
increased, the man began to mutter ; then to speak aloud ; then to 
speak violently and to gesticulate wildly ; and as he did so, several 
men gathered around him and partook of his excitement. 

My mother saw that a crisis was approaching and riveted her eyes 
on the central figure of the distant group. 

Suddenly with a stern determined visage he stepped into the mid- 
dle of the street, spoke with a commanding voice, and, having 
joined the palms of his hands in front of him, parted them sig- 
nifically. 

The crowd parted in front of him and opened a path wav to mv 
mother. 

He entered it ; and as he approached her sternly and silently, he 
made a gesture with his hands and the crowd made a passage 


JANE JANSEN. 


55 


around my mother and Congo, which he took ; and as he passed be- 
hind Congo, he made a third gesture, and the throng made a path- 
way to the end of the street up which my mother and Congo had 
come. 

My mother turned as the man in authority passed her. So did 
Congo ; and this placed Congo, with the starving baby in his arms, 
before my mother; and when the man in authority turned to the 
strangers to command them with a gesture to return at once in the 
way they had come, his eyes fell for the first time on the emaciated 
face of the puny infant in the arms of the colossal negro. 

He experienced a novel surprise which may be said to have in- 
volved only his head, but at the same time he experienced a novel 
sensation which may be said to have involved his heart. His 
emotional nature was awakened. The sternness in his face and 
manner disappeared. His hand significantly pointing toward the 
harbor fell at his side. He stood undecided in mind and relaxed in 
body. 

At this critical juncture, the wretched baby in his sight began to 
cry and to stretch out her little arms and clutch with her little 
hands ; and the man in authority who spoke in gestures understood 
the starving babe who spoke in the same universal language. 

The victory of suffering humanity in the extremity of existence 
was complete. 

The man in authority held a fan before his face to conceal his 
emotion ; and beckoning to his side a woman whom he discerned in 
the throng, he held a conference with her about the babe which he 
kept continually in his sight as if fascinated by her misery. 

My mother then, taking me in her arms, and making a few signif- 
icant gestures, indicated that her breasts no longer yielded suste- 
nance and that her baby was dying for want of suitable food. 

The woman understood ; and as she proved to be the wife of the 
man in authority, she directed my mother to follow her and con- 
ducted her to a large dwelling. Then, by gestures, indicating to my 
mother that Congo must remain on the outside and suffer himself to 
be wondered at by the still increasing throng around, she conducted 
my mother into the interior of the house where a chair and a tiger 
skin were placed before her — as much as to say take which you pre- 
fer. (The Chinese on the one side of the Koreans using chairs, and 
the Japanese, on the other, squatting on their heels on the floor.) 

My mother took the chair and soon was at her ease. 

And before many minutes had elapsed, three women, with babes 
on their bosoms, entered ; and from what they severally could spare 
from their breasts, the starving infant of the strange white-haired 


56 


JANE JANSEN. 


and white-skinned woman from somewhere in the wide wide world 
beyond the limits of their knowledge and conjecture, was fed till her 
hunger was satisfied — ^-till she smiled and sank to sleep amid the 
caresses of her newfound friends in the Forbidden Land of Korea. 

In the mean time, a general conference was held among the fathers 
and mothers who had assembled about the house of the magistrate — 
or whatsoever man in authority he might have been — and a conclus- 
ion arrived at which gave general satisfaction. 

My mother, from the treatment she had received, divined the im- 
port and acquiesced in what she was directed to do without a mo- 
ment’s hesitation. 

This was simply to go with a messenger whom the magistrate pre- 
sented to her and to whom she saw the magistrate give a letter — 
presumably a letter of instructions for the person to whom they 
were to go. 

But before my mother parted from the wife of the magistrate 
and the mothers w r ho gave so freely of their milk to her starving 
offspring, she gave to the first a silken shawl from her shoulders, and 
among the latter all the ribbons and wraps which could be removed 
from her sleeping babe without denuding her, and accepted several 
little trinkets as keepsakes in return. 

The messenger conducted my mother back to the whale-boat in 
waiting beyond the fishing-boats, and taking a seat by her side, 
pointed to an indentation in the shore-line about a mile distant. My 
mother directed the crew to row to the inlet indicated and let them 
disembark. And in due time the messenger and my mother, with 
Congo and the sleeping babe in his arms, were put ashore. 

The messenger preceding, and my mother closely following him, 
and Congo, with his precious charge, closely following my mother, 
the party proceeded inland a hundred yards or so, when the messen- 
ger stopped before a patch of recently broken ground over which 
two posts about four feet in height stood, leaning toward each other 
and over the broken ground. 

At first my mother could not make out the meaning of the signs 
and symbols before her ; but as soon as the messenger pointed out 
the features of a man and woman rudely carved on the tops of the 
posts, she saw and felt in an instant that they represented a father 
and mother bending in grief over the newly made grave of their in- 
fant offspring. 

My mother wept in a sudden gush of sympathy with the humble 
parents in their bereavement, as these homely monuments revealed 
them to be ; and when the messenger led them toward a neighbor- 
ing cottage, she was prepared to meet a father and mother in tears; 


JANE JANSEN. 


57 


either sitting in silence or moping about without aim. 

But she reckoned without taking into consideration the exactions 
of poverty. 

She found the father, a sturdy, bushy-haired young man, mending 
the rents in a rotten net, and the mother, a round-limbed, vigorous 
young woman, standing before a wooden mortar almost as high as 
her waist and wielding a wooden pestel fully five feet in length which 
she grasped in the middle and lifted at arm’s length over her shoul- 
der. She was crushing grain for their homely bread; and so urgent 
was the demand of necessity that she desisted not on the approach 
of the strangers and seemed to be indifferent to their presence. My 
mother watched her in wonder and sympathy — the pestel seemingly 
large enough to tax the strength of Congo, and the poor woman so 
meagerly clad in a jacket and petticoat that every time she lifted her 
arm she exposed a bare belt of her body between the two parts of 
her clothing, while the milk, pressed from her bosom, having satu- 
rated the front of the jacket, trickled thence to the ground. 

At length the messenger interrupted her and explained to her and 
her husband the object of the visit of himself and the strangers. 
The letter was produced and read. A long conference was held by 
the three Koreans ; and at length they stood in silence and looked 
at my mother. 

While this was going on my mother made up her mind to return 
with both husband and wife if possible, and make a sailor of the 
one while she retained the other as a nurse; and when she indicated 
to them that she would take them both and reward them richly with 
food and clothing, they assented cheerfully, and, after a few min- 
utes’ preparation, indicated that they were ready to accompany my 
mother. 

And two hours later, the messenger had been taken back to the 
city by the crew of the whale-boat, and my mother, with Congo and 
her baby, and the young Korean husband and wife were safe aboard 
“ The Whale-Hawk.” 


VII. 

At the first faint glimmering of the dawn the following morning, 
“ The Whale-Hawk ’’ was found to be surrounded by a score or more 
of Korean small boats containing several hundred persons. The 
alarming situation was reported by the watch and all hands were 

H 


58 - 


jane JANSEN. 


soon on deck with their appointed arms to repel the attack which 
seemed to be planned for daybreak. But the daylight increased and 
the Koreans awaited seemingly for a signal in silence — their num- 
bers increasing betimes by the arrival of one or more boats till there 
were fully fifty in a cordon around the ship. The fear of the crew 
extended to my mother ; and while they prepared for battle, she 
placed herself behind a bullet-proof screen with a powerful glass 
and scrutinized the inimical circle cautiously. She saw the Koreans 
were without arms. She reported the fact to the crew. But their 
arms might be concealed in the bottom of their boats. They were 
not to be trusted. 

At length the day dawned sufficiently for all to see without the aid 
of a glass, and all were satisfied that the attack might be expected at 
any moment. Congo armed with a club of a proportionate size and 
weight to his gigantic stature and enormous strength, crouched by 
the side of my mother, a perfect Heracles in ebony ready to spring 
upon another Lernaean hydra in the Korean hosts about to assault 
the ship on all sides at once. 

Suddenly Congo rose to his full height and threw his club on the 
deck, and, pointing to a shadowy object beyond the circle of the 
boats, induced my mother to rise also and focus her glass on what he 
discerned so satisfactorily to himself with his unaided owl-like 
vision. 

“ All, it is the magistrate of the city,” said my mother as she rec- 
ognized him among the ten or twelve persons in the boat. “ We have 
nothing to fear. Lay down your arms, and prepare to receive on 
deck the worthy man and his friends in a manner becoming his sta- 
tion in life, and that of his friends, and our appreciation of the 
heart of humanity which we have found in him and his people. 
Congo, broach the keg of brandy in my stateroom, and have it on 
tap to welcome our friends ; and bid my sister clothe our new nurse 
in the gown I fitted on her last night, and Jane in her richly embroi- 
dered Japanese wrapper, and herself in the crimson gown she pur- 
chased in Rio, and be in readiness to come on deck as soon as pos- 
sible.” 

The boat containing the magistrate and his friends passed slowly 
through the cordon of small boats which had been formed before its 
arrival, and, in a little while, lay almost motionless in the placid 
water under the lee of “ The Whale-Hawk.” My mother showed 
herself at the side of the vessel ; and having directed the lowering of 
an accommodation ladder in the most convenient place, she pointed 
to it and beckoned to the magistrate to ascend. 

He did so and was followed by nine of the number who had 


JANE JANSEN. 


59 


accompanied him. All were dressed in gaudy-colored garments of 
the most fantastic patterns, topped out with broad-brimmed horse- 
hair hats set on the crown of the head and held in place by a rib- 
bon under the chin ; except one, a venerable mourner with a majes- 
tic port and an intellectual cast of countenance that would com- 
mand respect in any country of the globe, clad in a voluminous robe 
of unbleached linen, wearing a drooping brimmed hat so large as to 
extend over his shoulders, and carrying in his hands a foot-square of 
unbleached linen bent to two light pieces of bamboo — like a flag be- 
tween two sticks — which, after recovering from the exertion of 
climbing the ladder and regaining his composure, he held before his 
face just below his eyes. 

My mother bowed to each of them in turn and stationed them in 
a semicircle in front of her. Then, summoning Congo with the 
brandy, he appeared, wearing a long snow-white apron and a huge 
snow-white Tam o’ Shanter, which increased his apparent height and 
magnitude amazingly and intensified the sable hue of his skin, and 
carrying a large tray on which were a bottle of brandy and a dozen 
glasses. The Koreans looked at the monster in self-forgetful awe ; 
and well they might, for he was doubtless the first African any of 
them had ever seen, and with his tribal scars on his cheeks and his 
row of artificial warts across his forehead and adown his nose, and his 
gigantic proportions, was such an extraordinary specimen of the 
great negro race as to excite wonder even among his own people. 
Then, turning to my mother, they regarded her with an absolute 
abandon of their customary gravity and reserve — her white hair 
and white skin, her feminine apparel and her masculine control of 
herself, and her apparent command of the ship, striking them as 
forcibly as the characteristics of Congo. 

Paying no attention, however, to their irrepressible curiosity and 
amazement, my mother poured out a sip of brandy and drank it in 
their sight to assure them it could be swallowed without fear of pois- 
on. She then poured into the glasses as much as she thought a man 
unused to the fiery liquor could carry safely, and directed Congo to 
pass them to her guests. 

The Koreans put the glasses to their lips, smelled and tasted the 
contents, and, looking knowingly around at one another, swallowed 
the brandy at a gulp ; and after looking knowingly around at one 
another again, they held up their empty glasses, as much as to say 
they were satisfied with the sample and ready for the remainder 
howsoever much it might be in the ship. 

But my mother feigned not to notice the very significant gesture, 
and directed Congo to collect the glasses and remove them and the 


60 


JANE JANSEN. 


bottle from their sight. She then summoned my Aunt Melissa and 
presented her in her gorgeous silk gown to the Korean gentlemen 
who treated her as deferentially as if she were a queen. Her round, 
smiling, and dimpled face impressed them very agreeably, and 
wreathed their faces with smiles and brightened their eyes in the ex- 
pression of the delight they severally felt — the venerable mourner so 
far forgetting age and grief as to let his face-screen fall to the deck 
and remain unheeded where it fell. 

The baby came next in the arms of her Korean nurse ; and when 
the magistrate and his friends beheld the puny little being whose 
sufferings had excited the sympathy of all who saw her, they 
crowded around her without restraint and overwhelmed the nurse 
with as many torrents of Korean speech as there were tongues 
among them. 

My mother and aunt were affected greatly by this exhibition of 
the human heart — the mysterious sympathy that asserts itself for 
the salvation of mankind in despite of themselves in their individ- 
ual growths — the basis of that reciprocity which universally subsists 
between men and women, the old and the young, the strong and the 
weak — that which bends the tangents of individuality into arcs and 
completes the organic circle of Man. 

It was an exhibition of the human head as well, which my 
mother and aunt did not comprehend until after it had been made 
manifest to them by unmistakable signs and gestures. The Koreans, 
knowing nothing of the strangers in the city but what they saw, and 
being unable to imagine anything beyond the limits of their knowl- 
edge of the outside world, were obliged to draw their conclusions 
from the premises before them ; and they were perplexed in conse- 
quence to a degree perhaps never experienced before in the legiti- 
mate drama of life. 

First, there were a gigantic black man and a large white woman, 
with a baby between them. They were father and mother and off- 
spring, of course. Then the mother’s hair was as white as snow and 
her bosom was without nourishment for her babe. She was appa- 
rently old enough to be a great-great-grandmother ! 

And no sooner had my mother and Congo, with her babe in his 
arms, departed from the city with the messenger than the report of 
the invasion of the last of the exclusive countries of the orient by 
the most extraordinary family of human beings ever heard or 
dreamed of, was spread far and wide around the harbor of Gensan 
with the effect of gathering the wondering people in silence around 
the ship in the night, as they had gathered around the trio in the 
streets of the city. 


JANE JANSEN. 


61 


My matter-of-fact mother was abashed and disconcerted greatly by 
the discovery that she was regarded by the Koreans as the wife of 
Congo and a woman of great age — as old as the venerable mourner 
in the unbleached linen robes to-whom she was likened ; and she 
w as not restored to her usual composure until after she had con- 
ducted the magistrate and his friends into the stateroom of my 
father and made apparent the relation between them and the cause 
of his confinement, and exhibited to them a photograph of herself, 
taken before the horrors of Hawaii had blanched her hair, in which 
her locks appeared to be as dark as a Korean’s. 

But my father, my aunt, and Congo, and all the crew of “ The 
Whale-Hawk,” were amused to the point of irrepressibility by the 
ludicrous mental bewilderment of the Koreans and the discompos- 
ure of my mother — she that was marble and granite in the endur- 
ance of physical agony and privation. My aunt laughed till the 
tears rolled down her cheeks ; and betimes turning up her pretty 
round face with its smiles and dimples and sparkling eyes, into that 
of the venerable mourner under the shadow of his great umbrella- 
like hat, made him feel too that he was an old, old man only in 
appearance, and a man of grief, unutterable in words, only in dis- 
guise. 

At length my mother participated in the general good humor that 
prevailed, albeit at her expense ; and, having summoned Congo, with 
his tray and glasses and refilled bottle, poured out to each of her 
guests a double quantity to that first given them, and handed to each 
his glass herself. 

After the second drink, the magistrate, taking my mother to the 
side of the ship pointed to several bales and bundles in the boat in 
which they had come, and indicated by gestures that they were for 
the baby — presents from the fathers and mothers of Korea in token 
of their sympathy with the ocean-born babe in the extremity of her 
suffering : a pitiful puny being in distress, albeit the apparent off- 
spring of the most anomalous father and mother their wondering 
eyes had ever beheld and their unimaginative minds could ever 
conceive. 

At a signal from the magistrate the packages were brought on deck 
and laid at the feet of my mother and opened before her. The first 
revealed a well-cured tiger skin of the largest size and brightest col- 
ors. This was spread, and the Korean nurse, with the babe in her 
arms, commanded by the magistrate to sit down in the middle of it 
to indicate the use to which it was to be put. Then came a screen to 
insure the privacy of the babe and her nurse, and articles of infan- 
tile apparel, of linen, cotton, oiled paper, horsehair, bamboo, and 


62 


JANE JANSEN. 


grass, and toys of tortoise-shell, wood, and bone, and trinkets of 
gold and jade, and eating utensils of silver, steel, and pottery — 
enough to stock a museum with curios from Korea, at that time 
among the rarest articles in the great collections of the globe ; and 
last but not least in the estimation of those who beheld them for 
the first time, a living pair of the long-tailed pheasant of the coun- 
try, and another of the beautiful crane, which, under the name of 
sru has been for centuries one of the favorite natural models of the 
artists of Japan — these in bamboo cages, with a liberal supply of 
food accompanying. 

My mother wept at this evidence of the depth to which the 
appearance of her starving babe had affected the people with whom 
she came in contact in her fearless invasion of the unknown terrors 
of a city of the exclusive Koreans. So did my aunt and Congo — and 
my father, when he afterward learned what had occurred ; but the 
crew of “The Whale-Hawk ” encircling the group around the tiger 
skin and catching astonishing glimpses betimes of the bountiful and 
wonderful stores supplied the miserable little being who heretofore 
had been the cause of all the calamities of the cruise, raised cheer 
after cheer in the expression of their exuberant reaction of senti- 
ment in favor of the infant — their mascot now ; for, said one to an- 
other, “ Have we not captured more whales since we left Yokohama 
than we ever did in the same time before ? And who ever saw better 
weather from one week’s end to the other ? And just see here, going 
right into the jaws of death and coming out with a new lease of life 
and a fortune ! That baby was born with a caul !— that’s what the 
white spot on her head came from — a lucky caul, or I’m no son of 
the sea ! ” 

In return for the presents received, in behalf of the baby, my 
mother gave to each of the Koreans a bottle of brandy ; and my 
aunt observing that one of them scrutinized with especial interest 
the printed characters and wood-cuts on the paper in which his bot- 
tle was wrapped, brought out from the cabin an armful of illustrated 
newspapers and magazines and distributed them among the fantas- 
tically dressed gentlemen. The pictures, and especially the colored 
fashion plates, at once fascinated them, as they continued indefi- 
nitely the series of glimpses into the outer world of which they 
knew so little and that little so incorrectly as practically to amount 
to nothing. 

Then, at the instance of the magistrate, Congo took me from my 
Korean nurse, and holding me aloft in his monstrous hands, while 
walking around the ship, exhibited me to the patient wondering 
throng of Koreans who crowded round in the small boats. My 


JANE JANSEN. 


63 


mother, escorted by the magistrate, and my aunt, by the venerable 
mourner, also walked along the side of the ship that all might see 
them and be satisfied — my aunt, now, being mistaken by the outside 
horde as the mother of the miserable midget and the probable wife 
of the gigantic negro, and my white-haired mother as the grand- 
mother of one or the other of the mistaken parents. 

In response then to the command of the magistrate, the good- 
natured staring multitude withdrew from the ship ; and a little later, 
the magistrate and his companions, after bowing profoundly to the 
baby, my mother, and my aunt, took their departure — the venerable 
mourner being the last to descend the ladder, and keeping his eyes 
on my aunt till his enormous hat falling from his head disconcerted 
him so much that he sank below the rail of the ship in a bewilder- 
ment of confusion. 

Seeing which, my mother remarked to my blushing aunt, “ My 
dear sister, you have shared with your niece in the conquest of 
Korea.” 


VIII. 

Cora, as my Korean nurse was christened by my aunt, was a per- 
fectly healthy young woman and a bountiful provider of the nat- 
ural sustenance requisite for her infantile charge; and in a few 
weeks after leaving the harbor of Gensan, I was as round and rosy a 
babe as ever gladdened the eyes of father and mother. Rolling and 
rollicking on the great tiger skin spread on the deck in fair weather, 
the sailors gathered round me and were vehement to profanity in 
their declarations that a more beautiful sight was never seen on the 
ocean. The fair weather continued, a whale of the largest size was 
captured, and the little ocean-born was credited with both. 

But unhappily, as I improved in health, my poor father declined. 
The decay of the bones of his left leg continued ; the color of health 
forsook his cheeks ; the flesh melted away from his bones ; and his 
prospects of recovering the use of his limb and regaining his usual 
vigor and vitality were becoming daily more and more hopeless. 

At length, with a heavy heart, my mother directed the return of 
the ship to the harbor of Yokohama; and in due time my father, 
emaciated and anaemic in the extreme, was removed from the ship 
to the hospital, and his left leg cut off by Dr. Kiskaddon as the only 
means known to surgery of saving his life— the ravages of necrosis 
then having involved the whole of the knee joint and extended up- 


64 


JANE JANSEN. 


ward so far as to necessitate amputation in the upper third of the 
thigh. 

In the mean time, my mother having rented a convenient house in 
Yokohama, quitted the ship, with my aunt, Congo, Cora, and her 
husband, and myself, to await the recovery of my father, and then 
return, as best they might, to America and spend the remainder of 
their days in their mountain home in Southwestern Pennsylvania; 
and “ The Whale-Hawk,” under the command of the chief officer, 
Jasper Medburv, with instructions to return to Yokohama within six 
months if possible, was sent to sea to resume the profitable business 
of capturing whales. 

When my father was removed from the hospital to his Yokohama 
home, he was a human being most pitiful to behold — his left leg 
wanting, his right, practically paralyzed, his back weak and painful, 
his mind distressed with evil forebodings, and the sailor’s heart in 
his bosom broken. He could never be fit for service at sea again. 
His race as a rover w'as run. He was a wreck, and the world 
around him was wreckage, and there an end. 

Moreover, he was without ready money and all his wealth was in 
“ The Whale-Hawk.” at sea. But, for the present, that mattered 
little; for his honesty and his successful voyages so far were known 
to many in Yokohama, and without difficulty he secured a loan 
from the Oriental Bank sufficient to provide for himself and his 
family for six months at least, which meant fully nine when dis- 
bursed by my economic mother. 

And while they waited the return of the ship, my mother and 
aunt, breathing the atmosphere of art which prevails throughout 
Japan, resumed their studies with an interest and avidity that soon 
accomplished gratifying and encouraging results — my mother mak- 
ing a specialty of painting portraits, landscapes, and natural objects 
on silk and chinaware ; and my aunt devoting herself to embroi- 
dery, which, in its employment of colored silken threads in lieu of 
paints and the most elaborate designs, is an art in Japan closely 
allied to painting and a special vocation of honor and remuneration 
of many gifted persons. 

In the painting of portraits, my mother was felicitous from the 
first and soon acquired a local fame, not only among the fraternizing 
and partial foreign residents of Yokohama, but also the nationally 
appreciative natives who are remarkably quick to perceive and 
acknowledge a special excellence in the arts they love so well. In 
her own household she had a series of original subjects of which she 
was practical enough to avail herself and make the most of as soon 
as she conceived herself able to do them justice— Congo, Cora, and 


JANE JANSEN. 


65 


her husband — or Yalu, as he was known in the family, from the 
great river of his native country — my Aunt Melissa, and myself. 
In the cranes and pheasants, also, she found appropriate accessories 
of great artistic value in her representations of the Koreans ; and 
with her accustomed attention to the minutest details from her ob- 
servation, she escaped the conventionalities in which these birds are 
represented generally in Japan, and excited a discussion among the 
native artists, which, by placing the birds themselves beside their 
counterfeit presentments, was decided unanimously and enthusias- 
tically in her favor. 

Then, as frequently as possible, for the special benefit of my 
father, excursions in jinrickishas were made to the several places 
and objects of interest in the neighborhood of Yokohama ; my 
mother, with her pencil and sketch-book in hand, usually being in 
the lead, drawn by a muscular tattooed man, who could not be in- 
duced to wear any other clothing than a meagre loin cloth ; my 
father following, drawn by Congo ; then Cora and myself, drawn by 
another nearly-naked Japanese ; and lastly my aunt, drawn by 
Yalu, the sturdy young Korean. The numerous tea-houses in the 
country provided us with suitable accommodations wherever we 
went ; and the people, universally courteous and considerate, treated 
us with exceptional kindness when they saw the helpless condition 
of my father, and silently wondered at the extraordinary bulk and 
facial peculiarities of Congo, and the hoary head and hale young 
body of my mother, and the patch of white hair now conspicuous 
among the black above my forehead : anomalies of nature to them 
absolutely beyond the realm of conjecture. 

And so they awaited the return of “The Whale-Hawk,” but the 
good ship never came back. 

At the end of nine months from the day of her departure from 
Yokohama, under the command of the chief officer, Jasper Med- 
bury, my father very reluctantly yielded to the opinion of my 
mother and the majority of their friends in Yokohama that the ves- 
sel had been wrecked on the northeastern shores of Asia, or gone 
down in the seas adjacent, my father’s favorite whaling “ grounds,” 
and it behooved him to prepare the preliminary proofs of loss and for- 
ward them to the International Marine Insurance Company of New 
York, by which the vessel had been insured, and negotiate a loan on 
the amount of the policy due my father in case of a total loss 
sufficient to pay the debts incurred in Yokohama and defray 
the expenses of the return of himself and his family to the 
mountain home of my mother and aunt in Southwestern Pennsyl- 

I 


66 


JANE JANSEN. 


vania. A power of attorney also was executed by my father and 
sent to his kind friend Robert Lindsay, of Philadelphia, which 
authorized and empowered him to negotiate the requisite loan and 
transfer to the lender for his security the policy left for safe keeping 
ashore in Mr. Lindsay’s fire-proof vault. 

Two months later my father received a statement from the insur- 
ance company that the proofs of loss were insufficient and the affi- 
davits of himself and friends revealed a series of deviations or de- 
partures from the course of the cruise agreed on, which, in the opin- 
ion of their attorney, avoided the policy. 

With respect to the deviations, however, the company waived all 
objections, since the officers of the company were apprised by my 
father at the time the policy was executed that he would take with 
him his wife and sister-in-law and enter divers ports perhaps more 
for their gratification than the necessities of the voyage, and that, 
as appeared from a memorandum, the policy would be avoided only 
in case the loss occurred by reason of such deviation ; but good and 
sufficient proof of the loss of the vessel in the cruising seas speci- 
fied in the policy, north of the latitude of Yokohama, Japan, was 
required imperatively. 

At the same time, my father received a letter from the administra- 
tor of Robert Lindsay, ship-chandler, late of the city of Philadel- 
phia, from which he learned that his old friend had died eleven 
months before the date of the letter, and that my father’s policy of 
insurance was still in the vault among the papers of the decedent 
subject to my father’s orders directed to him. 

My father’s last ray of hope departed. A physical wreck, a finan- 
cial wreck, and almost half the girth of the globe between him and 
a refuge for his family and himself, he was absolutely helpless to do 
anything for those so near and dear to him and himself. 

But not so his family under the masterful guidance of my 
mother. For some time past by the sale of her paintings and my 
aunt’s embroideries, she had maintained the family in comfort, and 
presumably could do so indefinitely ; but there seemed to be but lit- 
tle hope of ever gaining enough in addition to defray the expenses of 
the voyage home, either by the shorter but greatly more expensive 
route by way of San Francisco, and thence overland by rail, or by a 
sailing vessel around Cape Horn to New York or other port of the 
North Atlantic seaboard of the United States. 

And this little lay in more assiduous labor for years at least by her- 
self and aunt, and by greater economy than they had practiced be- 
fore ; and they sat down patiently to the task of indefinite dura- 
tion. 


JANE JANSEN. 


67 


The following year, almost to a day twenty-five months from the 
date of my fateful advent into the world, my mother gave birth to a 
boy, an infant with an abnormally large head and chest and small 
hips and legs, an apparent cripple for life ; and in the terrible ordeal 
which she underwent, she received such injuries as to make her 
almost as helpless in locomotion as my poor father. 

My unfortunate brother received the name of Jan from ni} 7 
mother, with the saddest sigh that ever came from her lips. A 
Japanese nurse was procured for him, and afterward a goat ; and, 
with the tenderest solicitude manifested by all for his comfort and 
welfare, he grew and thrived, happily unconscious of his affliction. 

My mother sat at his cradle and painted from dawn till dusk, re- 
peating mechanically the portraits which had been in great part the 
means of our livelihood so long in the past and must be in greater 
part in the future ; since my aunt henceforth was obliged to take 
upon herself the unaccustomed duties pertaining to the outside world 
which had been naturally my mother’s from childhood. 

Congo, as a porter, and Yalu, as a stevedore, brought their several 
earnings and put them into the common fund ; but the struggle for 
existence daily became more trying. 

A general sympathy was felt for the afflicted family among the 
foreign and native residents of Yokohama; and a thousand and one 
little acts of kindness lightened their load of suffering, while several 
tenders of money sufficient to take them home, but which my 
mother and aunt absolutely refused to accept, made them happy in 
the belief that they were immeasurably far yet from the bottom of 
the cup of adversity. 

At length, five years having passed from the date of our common 
destiny, my mother and aunt made an agreement with Justin Sie- 
bold, the master of a merchant sailing vessel, the “ Wandering Al- 
batross,” for the transportation from Yokohama to New York of our 
family and the stores of Japanese art which from time to time my 
mother and aunt had taken in exchange for their productions or 
had purchased for the profit they might make on them in the Amer- 
ican market. By executing a mortgage on their mountain farm 
which they held together as tenants in common— my father joining 
to make the signature of my mother valid — to secure the payment of 
$900, within sixty days after the arrival of the ship in New York, 
they secured suitable accommodations as first-class passengers for 
themselves, and my brother and myself, and engagements for Congo, 
Yalu, and Cora, by which they exchanged their labor for their pas- 
sage, and that also of two children born to the Koreans, a girl and a 
boy, Lily, in her -fourth year, and Yoko, (short for Yo-kohama 


68 


JANE JANSEN. 


Korean,) entering his third — Congo, as a galley and table servant, 
Yalu as a sailor, and Cora as a chambermaid and washerwoman. 
The ship’s cargo was made up wholly of Japanese wares, which 
was not an inconsiderable factor with my practical mother in con- 
cluding a bargain with Captain Siebold ; for she recognized it would 
be greatly to her advantage to make the acquaintance of the con- 
signees to further the sale of such of her art objects as she wished to 
dispose of and her paintings then on hand or afterward to be made. 

We went aboard the ship on the 7th day of January, 1875, and on 
the following day, the weather being propitious, we bade adieu to 
Japan — a country to remain in my memory forever, a kaleidoscopic 
recollection interblending fantastically the first impressions of my 
childhood, of an indoor world of sorrow and sadness and unceasing 
labor, in which my father on crutches and my brother supported by 
pillows, were the centre about which all revolved ; and an out-of- 
door world of ineffable beauty and delight, in which the central fig- 
ure was ever the symmetric snow-capped volcanic cone of Fuji- 
yama which is discernible distinctly from Yokohama. 

“ Farewell, dear old Fuji ! ” I said with a sigh, as I stood in the 
stern of the vessel, throwing kiss after kiss with trembling hand from 
trembling lips at the inanimate object as it sank below the horizon. 
Then, turning to my mother to hide the emotion revealed in my face 
in her bosom, I caught a glimpse of her snow-white hair ; and with 
a strange thrill of joy which I had never experienced before, I saw 
in them the snowcapped summit of the mountain, and cried out in 
a gleeful surprise, “ Oh, mamma, mamma, I see in you my beloved 
mountain, I am satisfied now to go with you to the other side of the 
world and think no more of the land I love ! ” 

“ My child,” replied my mother, smiling more brightly than I had 
ever seen her before ; “ I am doubly happy in hearing you say so — 
happy in knowing that you unite the objects in the outside world 
which you love and your mother ; and happy in learning that the 
imagination of your Grecian grandmother, lost in your mother, re- 
appears in you ; and that you will be her mental, as you give evi- 
dence already of being her physical, counterpart. By patience and 
perseverance you soon will acquire the knowledge and skill of your 
mother, and that, supplemented by the imagination you have inher- 
ited, will enable you to support yourself— and others, if necessary — 
in any part of the civilized world.” 

My practical mother at once appreciated the value of the discov- 
ery she had made in me, and hastened to gladden the hearts of my 
father and aunt with a report of my remarks and the significance 
she attached to them. 


JANE JANSEN. 


69 


“ 1 know it,” sai d my mother positively. “ She has found the for- 
tune of her grandmother, which was buried in me so deep as to be 
lost to the world. She will redeem herself from the bondage in 
which misfortune has placed her in childhood, and in removing her 
chains will liberate us all. Oh, what cannot an artist do that is 
gifted with the heritage of a Grecian imagination ! ” 

Encouraged by this conviction, my mother devoted herself to the 
development of what she conceived to be in me, namely, an inherit- 
ance of my grandmother’s imaginative mind and majestic body ; 
and daily, when resting from the labors of her brush in painting 
Japanese kakemono, or wall decorations, for the American market, 
she set me to draw and paint not what I saw about me in the ship 
but what I could imagine from my life in Japan. 

My first attempt included a view of Fujiyama in the distance, 
over the corner of a Japanese temple in the middle ground, and the 
back of a bending Japanese woman setting out rice plants in the 
mud in the fore. In execution, it was crude ; but it contained a con- 
ception of which my mother availed herself, and before twenty-four 
hours had elapsed, it appeared in a marketable painting on silk. 

My second attempt embraced a view of Fujiyama in the distance, 
over a row of houses along a village street running obliquely across 
the picture from the fore to the middle ground, with the figure of a 
little Japanese girl, with a baby on her back, staring at a Korean 
crane in a bamboo cage in front of the house in the foreground. 

My third represented the interior of a Japanese house, with a 
kakemono on the wall, an open window revealing a glimpse of 
Fujiyama, and containing two human figures, a woman sitting on 
her heels on the floor, interrupted, while eating rice from a bowl, by 
a little girl at her side, extending a large lily to her to see or smell. 

And so my mother and I worked together — my mother suggest- 
ing one thing after another to excite my imagination and give to my 
individual recollections of Japan an artistic expression with pencil 
and brush, and then incorporate my infantile work with her own 
in elaborately executed paintings on silk for sale. And one after 
another, as these pictures were finished they were rolled on a stick 
and stowed in the ship-trunk of my mother, a hundred of them tak- 
ing up no more room than a bolt of wall-paper. 

Then my mother induced me to keep a pictorial diary or log- 
book of our voyage. Every morning having called me to her side, 
she would say, “ Now, my dear child, what did you see yesterday 
that you can see this morning distinctly enough to portray on 
paper ? ” The first morning I drew the Captain’s cat, u Tom Bowl- 
ing,” which, to my surprise, the day before I had found asleep on 


70 


JANE JANSEN. 


the canvas cover of one of the life-boats of the ship; the second 
day, I drew the man at the wheel who would not answer my ques- 
tions and alternately frowned and smiled at me, till the Captain 
came and took me away, and having kissed me, told me, if he ever 
caught me talking to the man at the wheel again, he would never 
let me sit at the post of honor on his left at the head of the table 
where he had placed me when we came aboard. The third day, I 
painted a bark under full sail, which we had passed the preceding 
day ; and when I showed the picture to my father and called the 
object I had painted a “ ship,” he put his arm around me, and 
drawing me to the side of his reclining chair, said, “ No, Jane ; it is 
a bark. Only little land-lubbers would call it a ship ; but you, who 
are the daughter of the old sea-dog Skipper Jansen, and born at sea, 
must call it a bark.” And thereupon he began to take a novel inter- 
est in me to the great delight of my mother who listened to the first 
lesson he ever gave me, namely, on the distinguishing features of a 
variety of vessels, including the ship, brig, brigantine, bark, 
schooner, sloop, junk, steamer, and the like, with infinitely more 
attention and pleasure than I did ; for my father, theretofore having 
held himself strangely aloof from me, was a mysterious being 
whom I loved because my mother and my aunt loved him, and was 
tender and solicitous about only because I sympathized with him in 
his helpless condition and hopeless misery. 

From time to time then, as I drew or painted parts of the “ Wan- 
dering Albatross,” the sailors at work aloft or on deck, and the sea- 
birds following the ship, my father gently held me at his side and 
imparted to me so much from his stores of sea-lore that I began to 
be unintelligible in my speech to my mother and aunt to our mutual 
surprise and amusement. 

But one day, unhappily, after we had been several months at sea, 
and my father had kissed me for the first time in his life, I ran to 
him with my book before my mother had seen what I had drawn in 
it, and experienced such a shock .in the anguish which I caused him 
and the revulsion which he felt for me that we became strangers 
again in an instant. 

The day before, while admiring the infinite interblending of the 
beauties of curve and color in the wake of the vessel, I caught a se- 
ries of glimpses or partial views of an'enormous shark which fol- 
lowed the ship ; and I was able to reproduce its characteristic form 
with sufficient accuracy for my father to recognize it at a glance and 
recall in a flash the circumstances which had sunk him from a glor- 
ious altitude of physical and intellectual activity and independence 
to a groveling slough of despondency for the remainder of his life 


JANE JANSEN. 


71 


all organic in the unconscious child before him ! 

I ran to my mother in a bewilderment of alarm and grief, cry- 
ing out, “ Oh, mamma, mamma, I have scared Skipper papa nearly 
to death with a picture of a shark ! He will never kiss me again. 
Oh, he shivered so, he shook me from him! I am so sorry — wdiat 
can I do — what can 1 do to make him love me again ? ” 

“ Alas ! my child, I do not know,” replied my mother as pale as 
ashes. “ But come and kiss me, and I will endeavor to explain to 
you why the picture of the shark made him shiver and shake you 
from him, as you say ; and why I do not know what you can do to 
make him love you again, to my great grief as well as your own.” 

My mother then told me what had happened at my birth ; but I 
could not understand why my father was disappointed at my com- 
ing into the world a girl and not a boy, and why he did not love me, 
a girl, as well as he might, a boy ; and I was not satisfied with my 
mother’s explanation. 

For several days I avoided my father ; but one afternoon when he 
was alone on deck, I felt myself impelled to his side by an irresisti- 
ble yearning and said to him softly, “ Skipper papa, do you love 
mamma ? ” 

“ Tenderly, my child,” responded my father ; “ but why do you 
ask ? ” 

“ She was born a girl, Skipper papa.” 

My father burst into tears. 

“ My child,” at length he said ; “ forgive your poor old broken- 
down father. He loves you dearly, but somehow cannot show it as 
he should. Come to him, Jane, and teach him how to be to you as 
he is to your mother.” 

“ Kiss me, Skipper papa,” I said to him, putting my arms tenderly 
around his neck. “ There, that will do. Three times to-day, and 
three times to-morrow, and three times every day till ” — 

“ Well, till ” — repeated my father the words on which I suspended 
in dread of the remainder of the sentence which I felt myself urged 
to utter as irresistibly as I had felt myself impelled to his side. 

“ Till you can look at a picture of a shark without shivering and 
shaking me from you,” I said, with something of the tone of my 
mother’s voice in my speech, and something of her manner in my 
straight-forward delivery, that made him from that moment in a 
great measure as susceptible to my influence as to that of my 
mother. 

“ That I can do even now, my child. The spell of my enchant- 
ment is broken.” 

u Then open your eyes and look at the page before you,” I said, 


72 


JANE JANSEN. 


as I opened the book and held it before him. 

“ But, my child, there is nothing on the page you show me.” 

“ Ah, I forgot, Skipper papa ; I washed away the shark with my 
tears.” 

The wretched man groaned, but he did not shudder ; and, clinging 
to him, I kissed him back from the gloomy purgatory of self- 
reproof into a world of brighter sunshine than he had seen for more 
than five long years. 

And soon after, he began to mend in body, and endured his alot- 
ment of misery with a cheerful resignation. 

His constant companion was my afflicted brother, Skipper Jan 
Jansen, Junior, he he styled himself proudly, to the great delight of 
my father during the instant of its utterance: as if he found the 
realization of his fondest dreams in the words, and lost it in the 
silence which succeeded them. 

Jan, Junior, was a bright precocious boy, with some physical and 
mental semblances to myself, in his glossy black wavy ringlets, his 
marble white skin, his big black observing eyes, and the shape of 
his teeth and finger-nails, while he was imaginative to a great 
degree — an inheritance through our mother from our Grecian grand- 
mother; but otherwise he was the counterpart of my father, in his 
structural form and emotional nature, or his disposition in the gen- 
eral acceptance of the word. And, doubtless, had he been born a 
normal babe, he would have filled to the brim the measure of the 
ideal Skipper Jansen of the future, of my father’s hopes and dreams. 
There was a secret bond of fellowship between him and the sailors of 
the “ Wandering Albatross,” which manifested itself the moment he 
came among them. With the words, “Shipmates, ahoy! ” uttered 
distinctly and cheerily, he gathered them around him, and made 
their individual acquaintance in a short time, calling them by their 
familiar nick-names, “ Tom,” “ Jack,” “ Shorty,” “ Stub,” and the 
like, as if he had been one among them for years ; and observing 
their deferential manner toward, the master and other officers of the 
vessel, he imitated them with a gravity that induced the good cap- 
tain and his mate to return his salutation kindly and promptly and 
give him his self-assumed title whenever they addressed him. 

Happy, happy little mortal ! the darling of the ship ! Taking in 
the world greedily and with delight through his abnormally quick- 
ened senses, chatting cheerily, and smiling merrily the livelong day ; 
and yet incapable of sitting upright without the support of pillows 
and bolsters, and moving from place to place only in the arms of 
another, generally Congo or Yalu, accustomed to his infirmity 
from his birth. 


JANE JANSEN. 


73 


At length, after a short stop at Lota, in the southern part of 
Chili, to take in water and provisions, a stormy passage around 
Cape Horn, another stop for fresh supplies of food and drink at 
Bahia, in Central Brazil, without accident, and with a clean bill of 
health, the “Wandering Albatross” entered the harbor of New 
York, and Skipper Jan Jansen, and his family, including Congo, 
Yalu, Cora, Lily, and Aoko, disembarked and obtained lodgings in a 
convenient hotel near the business centre of the great city— the Sail- 
ors’ Home, on Pearl street. 


IX. 

The tariff on a number of dutiable articles among the Jap- 
anese wares and curios of my mother and aunt having been paid, 
and the stores brought to their rooms in the hotel, the kind proprie- 
tor, in his sympathy for the afflicted family, gave my mother per- 
mission to display them for sale in one of the parlors of the hotel, 
and procured a license for her to do so. 

But day after day passed without a sufficient number of sales to 
pay the current expenses of the family. Personal invitations to call 
and inspect were sent out by the hundred but with little effect; and 
small advertisements were inserted in the great daily newspapers, 
with less. 

My mother sat in silent cogitation from hour to hour. She ate 
little and soon wore a haggard look infectious in the extreme to the 
anxious ones who gathered in silence around her. 

At length she said, “If the mountain will not come to Moham- 
med, Mohammed must go to the mountain. With Congo to sup- 
port me, I can go from store to store and sell our wares. At any 
risk, I will try. It is the last resource at my command.” 

She selected her choicest curios, and, having summoned Congo, 
set out ; but before she had proceeded a square, and effected a sale, 
she sank insensible from the pain she endured from the unusual ex- 
ertion. Congo took her up in his arms and carried her back to the 
hotel — everybody, man, woman, and child whom he passed at once 
turning to stare at the extraordinary sight of the gigantic negro with 
his peculiar facial adornments, carrying bodily an insensible woman 
with hair as white as snow, as easily as an ordinary man would 
carry a two-year-old child ; and a rabble, including several police- 
men, gathered at the door a few minutes after he had entered it. 

J 


74 


JANE JAP&EN. 


In the evening following, Congo disappeared. 

And one and all felt the keenest anxiety for the faithful, big- 
hearted fellow who was as dear to us as if he were of our own 
blood. 

The next day my mother advertised the missing man and offered 
a reward for any information leading to his recovery. She also gave 
a special description of the giant to the police department of the 
city, with instructions to return him if found to her at her hotel. 

And the following day, my mother was summoned to the head- 
quarters of the police. She procured a carriage, and accompanied 
by the officer who brought her the summons and myself, went to 
the station as soon as possible. 

We found poor Congo, hand-cuffed and fettered in an iron cell, in 
a perfect frenzy of rage, snorting through his distended nostrils, and 
clacking his great teeth together like hammers, making a peculiarly 
frightful sound which had never been heard before by any of the 
policemen present to issue from a human being. 

But as soon as he saw my mother and myself, he began to grow 
calm ; and after a while, assured of his sanity by his manner and 
the statements of my mother, the door of the cell was unlocked and 
the black giant brought out into the well-lighted corridor, where, 
stooping down and extending his hand-cuffed arms to me, I put my- 
self in the circle of his arms ; and while he lifted me in rising, 
pressed against his bosom, I threw my arms around his neck and 
kissed him again and again in a transport of joy. 

The officers were affected greatly by the sight and quickly re- 
moved the hand-cuffs and fetters from the wrists and ankles of 
Congo, and gave him a chair to sit on, while I still clung around his 
neck caressing him lavishly. 

It appeared then from the stories told by Congo and the officers, 
that the gigantic African having cast his eyes upon a comely black 
wench who passed the hotel in the evening, and received an allur- 
ing smile in return, followed her until she was lost to view in the 
rabble which gathered around him, and freely passed him from one 
saloon to another to satiate their curiosity on his extraordinary 
appearance, and in time, by giving him one glass of liquor after 
another, made him sink insensible to the gaze of the mob around 
him. Then, his commercial value as a world’s wonder being recog- 
nized by many, he was put on a stretcher and carried to a dime mu- 
seum, where, when he recovered his senses the following morning, he 
found himself strapped and propped upright in a chair on a plat- 
form, and on his right an enormous fat woman and a living skeleton 
man, and on his left, a naked tattooed man, a dwarf in the uniform 


JANE JANSEN. 


75 


of a general, and a bushy white-haired woman with a big spotted 
snake hanging round her neck, while in front of him stood a roomful 
of staring, gaping people whom a man, standing pn a box by the 
wall, was addressing — repeating every few minutes, with a ringing 
metallic voice, “ There, ladies and gentlemen, in the central figure on 
the platform, seated on a crudely improvised throne, you behold the 
greatest living wonder that has ever been exhibited in America, the 
king of a race of giants which inhabits the unexplored regions of 
Central Africa along with the pygmies of whom you have heard and 
who serve these giants as the jackals serve the lions of the great 
Asiatic and African w’ilds. He was captured in battle, it is said by 
an elephant trained for the purpose to lift the giant from the earth 
with his trunk and carry him from the combat and hold him in the 
air until bound hand and foot with lassos ; but as to the truth of 
this story, I cannot say. Step up close, and behold the unmistakable 
signs and symbols of his royalty emblazoned in his living flesh, a 
trident of scores on each cheek, and every prong as long and broad 
as a man’s finger, and a row of wart-like elevations, extending from 
the woolly crown of his royal head, across his majestic forehead and 
down to the tip of his imperial nose, all of the same size, and each 
supposed to contain a diamond of the first water of the size of a 
pea. Step up, ladies and gentlemen, and examine the king of the 
African giants at your leisure and to your satisfaction. There he is, 
just imported from the wilds of Central Africa, and now for the first 
time put on exhibition in any of the cities of the civilized globe. 
There is no fraud about this world’s wonder. Step up, ladies and 
gentlemen, and satisfy yourselves by the closest and fullest 
inspection.” 

But, by the time Congo had heard this oration a score of times, 
he began to realize that he was bound to the chair in which he sat 
and exposed as a show to the multitude before him ; and not seeing 
any of his friends in the throng, he began to stir with suspicion and 
fret in his bondage. At length, his anger becoming fully aroused, he 
burst the cords with which he was bound to the chair ; and rising in 
his wrath, with the chair in his hand as a menacing weapon, he 
scattered the freaks on each side and the multitude before him in the 
wildest consternation. As the excitement increased, the fury of the 
enraged giant knew no bounds. But happily for the panic-stricken 
people the big serpent of the Albino snake-charmer attracted the eye 
of the African ; and when it fell from her neck on the platform 
when she fled in affright, he crushed it with a storm of blows till 
the chair broke into fragments in his hands. Then, taking the car- 
case of the serpent in his hands, he hurled it at the showman stand- 


76 


JANE JANSEN. 


ing aghast on his box and knocked him down sprawling among the 
throng crowding in the fear of death to the doors and windows to 
make their escape. 

At this juncture, a ludicrous sight on the floor of the show-room 
caught the eye of the ferocious savage and saved the lives of several 
persons doubtless, by transmuting his rage into laughter. By the 
strangest good fortune, the living skeleton in descending from the 
platform fell headlong on the floor, and the enormous fat woman 
rolling on his legs and being unable to rise securely fettered him 
sprawling beneath her. The one bawled for help at the top of his 
voice, and the other puffed and groaned ; till Congo’s laughter hav- 
ing subsided, and his sympathies being excited by the helpless pair, 
he got down from the platform, and put his arms around the fat 
woman, and exerting all his gigantic strength, lifted her to her feet, 
and held her upright, as greatly weakened now by terror in the arms 
of her deliverer, as she had been by fear, beneath the uplifted weap- 
on of her threatening destroyer. 

In which situation, the policemen who ascended the back stair- 
way of the museum while the panic-stricken multitude descended 
the front, found the black giant and pinioned him before he could 
make any resistance and conducted him to the station, where he 
was locked up for safe-keeping in the iron cell in which we found 
him. 

Upon the receipt of my mother’s description of the missing man, 
he was identified at once, and my mother sent for to make such dis- 
position of the African giant-king as she saw fit. 

There was a general laugh when the stories were told of Congo 
and the policemen who had captured him, with his arms around 

the fat woman of the dime museum ; but there were tears in the 

eyes of all when my mother revealed to the officers of the law the 
relations which subsisted between the gigantic negro and herself and 
family, from the time he had been picked up starving at sea till the 
time he had taken up her insensible body in the streets of New 
York, when she sank in her unavailing efforts to dispose of any of 

her stores of pictures and Japanese curios for the relief of her 

afflicted family. 

But the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Before my mother 
had finished her story, a number of excited men, in civilians’ dress, 
with pencils and pads of paper in their hands, came hurriedly into 
the station and listened to every word she said with a peculiarly ab- 
sorbing interest, in contrast with the semi-perfunctory manifested by 
the uniformed policemen. 

Then she was requested by several to repeat the part of her story 


JANE JANSEN. 


77 


which they had not heard. She did so ; and inyited any who de- 
sired any farther information to call at her hotel. 

And strangely to me the men with the pencils and paper in 
their hands wrote while they listened, and so rapidly that I wonder- 
ed while I watched them ; and when I saw what one of them had 
written, I wondered still more, for I had never seen before the mys- 
terious characters in which human speech is expressed by the inge- 
nious inventions of Pitman and other phonographers. 

Then Congo was examined by these eager men, and his height and 
stretch of arms determined by measurement ; and afterward the 
poor fellow was questioned so persistently and from so many sources 
at once, about the significance of the scars and warts on his face, 
and how they were produced, and what he was in Africa, and what 
in Brazil, and so forth, that he became bewildered and stood mute 
in a stupor of amazement. 

At length, my mother, having obtained permission to take Congo 
with her to the hotel, bade him assist her to the carriage in waiting 
and enter with her and myself to avoid as much as possible the 
stare of wonder of the people and the gathering of another mob at 
their heels. 

The following morning all the great newspapers of New York con- 
tained sensational accounts of the adventures of the gigantic Afri- 
can king in Gotham, followed by approximately accurate reproduc- 
tions of my mother’s narrations to the policemen and the reporters, 
as I learned the rapid writers in the strange characters to be ; and 
before we had finished our breakfast, my mother and aunt were 
called to our parlor-store to attend to the wants of a throng of pur- 
chasers who had gathered at the door. 

The tide had turned in our favor ; and my mother, recognizing 
the fact that it was owing wholly to the interest humanity always 
takes in humanity, when it is exposed in the raw, kept Congo, the 
hero of the hour, attired in his most becoming dress, that of a ser- 
vant in white apron and cap, at her side the livelong da} T , while Yalu, 
Cora, Lily, and Yoko, in the peculiar garb of Korea, were disposed 
among the guests as living guarantees of the genuineness of the 
remotely foreign goods which she offered for sale. As the number of 
purchasers continued to increase, my mother shrewdly advanced the 
prices of her diminishing wares, and easily obtained five dollars for 
a curio which the day before she could not sell for one. And when 
she saw the bottom of her limited stock and an increase in the num- 
ber of customers, coming eagerly and going well pleased, she sent 
for several of the consignees of the Japanese wares which comprised 
the cargo of the u Wandering Albatross ; ” and, when they saw the 


78 


JANE JANSEN. 


trade she was carrying on, they gladly gave her supplies from their 
stores to sell on commission as long as she found it profitable to re- 
main in New York. When, too, she had sold all her paintings on silk, 
except her samples, she took orders enough to keep her employed 
busily for a year or more. 

The effect of Congo’s adventures as an advertisement continued 
for the usual period of a wonder, nine days ; and during this busi- 
ness week and a half, the two sisters, to their great amazement and 
delight, realized in cash, from the sales of their own wares and works 
of art in painting and embroidery over fifteen hundred dollars, and, 
in the way of commissions on the wares supplied them by the out- 
side merchants nearly three hundred dollars more. 

Captain Siebold was sent for and paid the passage money agreed 
on; and, in token of our general appreciation of the many kind- 
nesses we had received at the hands of himself, his officers, and his 
crew, my mother presented him with a kakemono which represented 
the whole family, including Congo and the Koreans, on the deck of 
the “Wandering Albatross” — each in an appropriate attitude or 
occupation. The good captain was delighted at our success, and 
affected greatly by the gift of my mother; and having had prepared 
by an attorney-at-law a proper receipt for the money and an attested 
authorization of the recorder of the county of Westmoreland, in the 
state of Pennsylvania, to make a matter of record the satisfaction of 
the mortgage, forwarded to him from Japan by mail, he gave the sev- 
eral papers to my mother with an order for a portrait of myself to 
be painted by my mother at her leisure in her mountain home, for 
which he insisted on paying in advance, one hundred dollars. 

“ And I will add to it, Skipper Siebold, a picture designed by your 
grateful little friend of yourself catching the sun in what you were 
pleased to call your mouse-trap, over the back of Tom Bowling 
asleep on the cover of the life-boat, and a curious little girl at your 
side, with a sketch-book and pencil in her hand.” 

“ Aye, aye, my hearty, let me have it,” responded the captain ; 
“for between my devotion to Tom, who has been my shipmate for 
years, and you, who have had the seat of honor at my side during 
the last long voyage, I do not doubt I have wandered out of my 
reckoning many a time and prolonged the voyage, and it will make 
amends for the greater anxiety I felt on your account. Now, give 
me a good big kiss . . . and another for Tom Bowling . . . 

and a third for the good ship that brought you safely for so many 
thousand miles . . . and let me go.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


79 


X. 

We spent several days in seeing the sights of the great city of 
New York, and in shopping — that is, my mother, Aunt Melissa, and 
myself ; my father and brother being confined to their chairs in the 
hotel ; and Congo and the Koreans restricted under the strictest in- 
junctions to their own rooms and the corridors and office of the 
hotel. 

At length, our trunks were packed, the hotel bills paid, and we were 
about to go to the railway station and take the cars to the nearest 
town to our mountain home, when, sobbing as if my heart would 
break, I besought my mother to remain another day and let me 
spend it with her in the Metropolitan Museum among the casts and 
models and works of art in a style never seen by me before and 
which to me were the most convincing evidences that I had entered 
a New World — that of the Greek imagination, to which, in despite of 
my birth in the waters of Japan and my childhood spent in the 
sight of my beloved Fujiyama, my heritage inclined me and as irre- 
sistibly as that of a newly-hatched duck impels it to the water. 

What is bred in the bone will never be out of the flesh. 

My mother listened to my incoherent request with surprise and 
gratification ; for through my intermingled emotional sobs and child- 
ish pleadings, she divined the deep import of my imperfect speech. 

“ My child, you shall be gratified,” responded my mother. “ We 
shall remain two days longer, and you and I will go to the museum 
and study and sketch the works of art which attract and please you 
the most.” 

“ And the first one shall be the Venus of Melos,” I cried out, clap- 
ping my hands with joy, while the tears continued to flow down my 
cheeks, but not from the fountain of grief as before but that of 
gladness. 

“ But why, my child — why that mutilated figure, without arms 
and full of blemishes ? I do not understand you.” 

“ Oh, I can see the statue’s arms, dear mamma, when you cannot ; 
and I can see the perfection of the statue within its imperfections. 
See, here in the sketch I made this morning — here are the arms and 
the hands, and the body and face without the blemishes you have 
seen but which I did not.” 

My mother took my restoration of the celebrated statue and re- 
garded it for several minutes in silence, but with evident wonder in 
her eyes and delight in her smiling countenance. 

“ It is artistic, my child ; but where did you get these objects you 


80 


JANE JANSEN. 


have added to the figure, and how and why did you combine them 
as you have done? ” 

“ Why, cannot you see, dear mamma? ” 

“ I cannot, my child.” 

“ Why, how blind you are ! Do you not remember when you laid 
your sketch-book on the empty pedestal and looked up at the 
Apollo Belvidere, you held your arms and hands and the book and 
pencil just as I have represented them here? ” 

“ I cannot recollect the circumstance, my child ; and if I did, I 
rested only a moment with my book on the pedestal.” 

“ But long enough, dear mamma, for me to see that you completed 
in that posture the broken statue.” 

“ But that is not a pedestal, my child, but a base and section of a 
fluted column ? ” 

“ The pedestal was too high and narrow for my picture, mamma. 
I took the column from the statue on the right near the door.” 

“ And this shield leaning against the column, and the sword lying 
at its base, where did you get them ? ” 

“ Why, mamma, mamma, do you not remember anything you saw 
in the museum ! I pointed to these objects and asked vou what they 
were, and you told me they were used by men in war, the sword to 
strike the enemy with, and the shield to protect against the sword of 
the enemy.” 

“ But why did you combine them with the column ? ” 

“ Mamma dear, I am surprised at you. The straight lines of the 
fluted column must be relieved by the curves of something, and I 
took the shield as the simplest and the most convenient object. 
Then I wanted something to relieve these several horizontal lines of 
the base, and laid the sword a little crosswise as you see.” 

“ You have done well, my child, and much better than you are 
aware with all your precocity in matters of art. You have made 
not only a restoration of the statue which is artistically correct in 
the disposition of the objects represented, but also a composite sym- 
bol which admits of a simple interpretation in keeping with the 
character of the most noteworthy of the works of art of the an- 
cients. The sword lying down and the shield leaning against the 
column symbolize the battle over, the victory won, and the safety of 
the country assured ; the section of a fluted column upright on its 
base, the temples of worship and the monuments of glory erected in 
the highest style of architecture; the stylus and the tablet, the 
achievements worthy of record during the times of peace and pros- 
perity that prevail ; and the figure of the heroic woman, the person- 
ification of a heroic country or city. With these several meanings 


JANE JANSEN. 


81 


attached to the several objects in your restoration, let us now read 
them from above downward and you will understand clearly the 
consistent story which you unconsciously have told. The woman is 
Greece, or Athens, if you will, and we will call her Pallas Athene. 
She is looking straight before her, placidly observing what is going 
on in the world around her ; with her pencil in her hand ready to 
enter the names of the worthy in the book of immortality before 
her as they come into being, as she already has recorded the 
names of those in the past who have erected the glorious piles of 
the Acropolis and achieved the memorable victories of Marathon 
and Salamis.” 

“ No, no, mamma dear; you frighten me. There is nothing in 
my picture but what I have told you.” 

“You do not know, my child. You cannot see your works as 
others see them, any more than you can see yourself as others see 
you. Our labors are ourselves enlarged. And that which we do 
consciously, compared with that which we do unconsciously, for 
good or evil, is as one to a hundred or more. Your picture painted 
by a little girl, represent what it will, reveals a glimpse of a future 
woman.” 

“ But I do not understand you, mamma.” 

“ No matter, my child ; you will some day, and possibly, for any- 
thing to the contrary I can say, from the impressions made upon 
you at this moment. Come, now, we will go to the museum and re- 
main as long as you will. The sprouting grain must have its proper 
soil and heat and light to make it grow, and a child of art can 
evolve alone in an environment of art.” 

At the close of the second day, I was surfeited with the sights I 
saw in the great museum of New York ; and the following morning 
we set out for our mountain home, where we arrived in due time — 
the long ride in the railway car being an equally long succession of 
novel sensations and impressions to me ; and the long drive from the 
railway station— Johnstown — in an open spring wagon, up hill and 
down hill, through field and forest — the buildings, the fences, the 
occupations of the people all strange to me — another series to shape 
and color my existence to the end, I doubt not, though to what ex- 
tent and in what particular I may never detect. 

And awaiting as we found Martin Rogers and his wife, Amanda, 
with four small children ; and Arabella, (now alone in the world, her 
mother Mirabel having died,) grown to a large and comely woman, 
and realizing fully the expectations of Congo, to whom her charms 
had been painted by my aunt in the most glowing colors ; and in 

K 


82 


JANE JANSEN. 


addition, the farm in a fairly good condition and a bank account 
showing a credit in favor of my mother and aunt of seven hundred 
and eighty -six dollars, which represented their share of the rents, 
issues and profits of the farm during their long absence, and which, 
in great part, the sisters had relied on in Japan to meet the ob- 
ligation wdnch they assumed to secure their return to the country of 
their birth and the home of their childhood and early womanhood : 
a sum, too, which enabled my mother, through the agency of her 
bankers, to repay at once the loan of the Oriental Bank of Japan, 
to my father, with the accrued interest for over five years. 


XI. 

We reached our mountain home in the middle of October. The 
forest was aglow with gorgeous colors, the weather was delightful, 
and our accommodations in the big stone house were comfortable, 
though limited, by reason of the number of my father’s family and 
that of Martin Rogers being united for the time being ; the barn and 
cellar were filled with stores for the winter ; the balance in bank in 
favor of my mother and aunt was larger than it had ever been be- 
fore ; and altogether we were in an environment especially favorable 
to promote the health and happiness of all. My mother regained 
somewhat of the color which in former years had relieved the immo- 
bility of her countenance, but nothing of the freedom from pain and 
impediment in locomotion which characterized her in her early 
womanhood ; my father improved in intellectual activity and physi- 
cal strength, until he was able to take a mental part in everything 
going on around him, to sit up in his chair and read and talk for 
hours at a time, and with the aid of crutches move about the house 
and to and fro along the highway in front of it for a short distance ; 
and my brother continued to grow and chatter and sing as uncon- 
scious of his hopeless infirmity as when a babe — and strangely in 
his dreamings and imaginings always moving about as if he were 
the happy possessor of the magic rug of the oriental tale to carry 
him whither he wished with the speed of thought. 

When the holidays came, the parlor was decked with spruce and 
ground-ivy ; a Christmas-tree set up and burdened with presents for 
the children ; the side-board opened betimes and its stores of cakes 
and candies distributed ; and the table set daily with a lavish pro- 
fusion of steaming meats and appetizing side-dishes, including a 
wild turkey stuffed with chestnuts, a sucking pig roasted, and ducks 


JANE JANSEN. 83 

and chickens stewed and broiled and fricaseed without number : the 
season of feasting and rejoicing not terminating Until the evening of 
the second day of January, the anniversary of my natal day, when 
the happy part was allotted to me to put the capping-sheaf to the 
celebration by taking the hands of Congo and Arabella and joining 
them together, when the Baptist preacher of Ligonier, called in for 
the purpose, pronounced them man and wife. 

The following spring, Martin Rogers removed with his family to a 
neighboring mountain farm ; and two small log houses, having been 
erected near the stone mansion, the Korean family were housed in 
the one on the northern side of the highway and west of the man- 
sion, and the African, in the other on the southern side of the road 
and east of the mansion : at the suggestion of my father to have 
them respectively starboard astern, in the direction of the north- 
eastern coast of Asia, and port ahead, in the direction of south- 
western Africa, while he lay high and dry on the rocks in the ocean 
of Appalachia with his jib to the south and his keel asleep in the 
bed of his needle. 

And when the glorious autumn came again, my mother, my aunt, 
and I went to the great Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and 
spent a fortnight in staring — in the several departments of the 
world’s show, and the academies of fine arts and sciences, the 
zoologic gardens, the parks, and the public buildings of the city — 
until my poor mother became exhausted and we were obliged to 
return. 

From the effect of the myriad of impressions I received during 
this visit, I was in a stupor for several days after we got back to our 
mountain home ; and strangely, when I began to tell my father and 
brother of what I had seen and heard, I found myself speaking as 
frequently of things which I had observed unconsciously as of those 
which I had studied consciously and even sketched. Howsoever, in 
time, while in a great measure I lost the finite in the infinite, I felt 
that I had received a new impetus in the direction of my natural in- 
clinations and applied myself zealously to the acquisition of the 
necessary skill with pencil and brush to give a satisfactory art ex- 
pression to my endless imaginings ; and having the assistance and 
encouragement of my mother at work by my side constantly, I made 
rapid progress. 

The following winter, I was sent to the nearest public school ; and 
among the boys and girls from six to twenty years of age who at- 
tended as scholars like myself, by reason of my ability to make a 
recognizable likeness of any of them in a moment on the black- 
board, I was looked upon as a prodigy of art ; and happily without 


84 


JANE JANSEN, 


incurring the ill-will or envy of any, possibly because in this I did 
not compete with any and none suffered by comparison ; while in 
other respects I was of them, puzzled and perplexed oftentimes to 
tears over my lessons within doors, and racing and romping with 
the wildest without. 

The weeks and months sped joyously — the spring came, the sum- 
mer, the autumn, and the winter again, when in the month of Feb- 
ruary, (1878,) when I had entered my ninth year, my father went in 
a sleigh to Greenesburgh, the county-seat of Westmoreland, to have 
the satisfaction on the mortgage on our mountain farm made a mat- 
ter of record and to consult a prominent attorney-at-law, Horace 
Holland, Esq., with respect to the advisability of bringing suit 
against the International Marine Insurance Company, of New York, 
on his policy, and took me along with him to assist him in going up 
and down steps and to minister to him otherwise in the many ways 
I was accustomed. 

It was a drive from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, 
with the mercury below the freezing point ; but being protected well 
with wraps and robes, and getting a good dinner at Youngstown on 
the way, we made the journey with little discomfort — I sleeping, in 
fact, nearly all the afternoon. 

We lodged at the Fisher House on Main street ; and after supper, 
having requested the landlord to direct us to the residence of Mr. 
Holland, we set out, under the guidance of a seemingly half-crazy 
negro as black as soot who responded to the name of Jim Green, to 
my great amusement: the names of the colors being inseparable 
from the hues in my mind. 

As we passed the office of the lawyer before we came to his resi- 
dence, the porter, observing a light in the window, opened the door 
without knocking, and stepped into the room ; where, without any 
recognition by address of anybody within, and without so little of 
ceremony as the removal of his hat, he turned to my father and said 
in a loud voice, “ Here you are, boss. Step right in.” 

My father, abashed at the discourtesy of the negro servant, hesi- 
tated. 

“ Come in,” said a voice in a thunder-tone that startled my father 
as well as myself. 

We entered; and the negro porter, having stepped behind us went 
out and closed the door. 

The large office was filled with tobacco smoke to such an extent 
that the gas-jet over the table in the centre of the room and the 
blazing fire in the grate were dimmed perceptibly in the haze ; and 
combined with the visible smoke was an all-pervading smell which 


JANE JANSEN. 


85 


interblended the odors of whiskey and tobacco and several others 
equally disagreeable to me from unknown sources. 

I was affected with nausea at once ; and when I looked around 
and found myself in the midst of eight or ten well-dressed men with 
broad and high foreheads, long noses, broad shoulders and big 
chests, and other evidences of great intellectual activity and physical 
energy, with cigars and glasses in their hands and the flush of in- 
temperate conviviality in their faces, I was horrified. 

“ I desire to see Mr. Holland,” said my father, raising his hat, and 
standing on his' crutches in a most respectful attitude. 

“ I am he,” said the man at the head of the table in the same 
thunder tones that bade us enter ; and having risen and revealed to 
me a tall, comely man with a closely shaven hatchet-face from which 
projected prominently a long curved nose, he assisted my father in 
sitting down on a strong wooden chair and placed me on another at 
his side. Then, having resumed his seat, he handed to my father a 
glass and the bottle before him. “ It is Old Monongahela, sent to 
me by the manufacturer himself, my old friend Abram Overholt. 
Help yourself. You need not be afraid of it. Fill up, fill up.” 

“ Words unnecessarily spoken to a sailor from his infancy when 
he finds himself in good company,” said my father bowing, with a 
distinctness of utterance I had never heard in his speech before and 
in a commanding tone that seemed to belong to one of the strangers 
around me rather than my father. 

He filled his glass to the brim, and, holding it before him, said, 
“Skipper Jan Jansen salutes you, and drinks your individual 
healths.” He then drank the liquor, and brought the glass down on 
the table with a startling whack. 

I stared at my father in a stupor of wonder and horror. 

The lawyer and his friends returned the salutation ; and one after 
another, the loud and deep-voiced man presented them to my 
father. “ This is Judge Blake, one of the most distinguished of the 
Frosty Sons of Thunder — otherwise Blue Rats— who have come 
down from the heights of our neighboring county of Somerset to 
drive the water-breathing tadpoles and polliwogs of humanity out of 
the swamps and ponds of the valleys of Old Westmoreland and 
convert them willy nilly into air-breathing toads and frogs of respec- 
tability. And this is the great Dr. Johnson— not the Leviathan of 
Literature of Boswell’s limning, but the Atlantosaurus of Science 
whose biographer has not appeared yet in the world of letters and 
will not till the Recording Angel comes down and takes up the pen 
of a scribe in human guise. And this is General Cutler, who has 
done more fighting and said less about it, than any soldier of the 


86 


JANE JANSEN. 


late war. And this is the Reverend William Donald Meredith, a 
doctor of divinity, and a superlatively good fellow in despite of it, 
an orator, a poet, and a philosopher. And this is Surveyor Hop- 
kins, who has eaten at more tables, I dare say, than any man in the 
county and with less benefit to his bones. Look at him ! You could 
study anatomy even through his clothes. But somehow, he has the 
biggest heart of the party and such bowels of compassion as to inca- 
pacitate him for the bench. And this is Editor Conway — strange to 
say, a man whose character for truth and veracity has never been 
challenged since I came to the bar. And this, Sheriff Grimes, who 
has been running for one office or another since he attained his ma- 
jority, and kissed all the babies born in the county, and a few per- 
haps just over the border, during the past twenty years — a man with 
a glass in his hand, to be loved for his virtues and respected for his 
wisdom, but with a writ in his hand to be shunned as a demon of 
destruction. So, you see Skipper Jansen, if I am to be believed, 
you have not fallen among thieves. But,” turning to me as he was 
about to resume his chair, the tlrunder- voiced voluble lawyer said, 
“ who is this grave little woman with the eyes of Sappho in the 
head of Hera at your side ? ” 

“ Ah,” replied my father somewhat startled, as if he had forgotten 
I was with him, and looking at me with an expression of mental 
discomposure in his face now aflame from the effects of the liquor 
he had taken ; “ this is — speak for yourself my daughter, and tell 
the gentleman who you are.” 

“ I am Skipper Jansen’s daughter, Jane,” I replied ; “ and I thank 
you, Mr. Holland, for the compliment you have paid me, for I love 
Sappho and admire Hera.” 

“ You love Sappho and admire Hera ! Why, my grave little 
woman, you speak of these Grecian dames of two thousand years 
ago, as if you knew them as familiarly as your schoolmates.” 

“ I have drawn and painted them both a hundred times, partly 
from the conceptions of others, and partly from my own.” 

“ You are an artist, then.” 

“ I hope to be, some day. I am now only the pupil of an artist.” 

“ Your father? ” 

“ No ; my mother, the daughter of an artist, my grandmother, 
who, I have been told by my mother and her sister, my Aunt Me- 
lissa, belonged to a family of artists.” 

“ You have inherited then the artistic talent of the mother’s side 
of your house ? ” 

“ So I have been told, and I believe it ; for I am like my mother in 
many ways, and unlike my father, as you may see.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


87 


u I can believe that and readily, my grave little woman ; for you 
have the manner and speech of a matron, while you are but a child 
in years. How old are you ? ” 

u I was eight on the second day of January.” 

‘ £ I can vouch for her years,” said my father, interrupting the dia- 
logue between the lawyer and myself; “ for on the day of her birth 
I met with the accident that wrecked me for the remainder of my 
days ; and as to her matronly ways and speech, you must know, Mr. 
Holland, that, like the mythic sage of China, she came into the 
world hoary-headed.” 

As he said this he lifted my hat from my head and displayed the 
patch of white hairs surrounded by the black above my forehead. 

“An inheritance, too, from her artistic mother?” enquired Dr. 
Johnson, coming forward and taking my head between his hands to 
turn it as he saw fit during his examination. 

u No,” replied my father ; “ not an inheritance in the usual accep- 
tation of the word, but still an inheritance since it came to her 
through her mother. It is the effect of an impression made upon 
my wife two months before the birth of the child, which blanched 
the whole of the head of the one and as much as you see of the 
other.” 

“ A night of horror ? ” 

“ Seven ages compressed within as many days and nights.” 

These words of my father were followed by a profound silence. 
His emotional nature had found an utterance between a bubble and 
a burst, which, combined with the appearance of his crutches, ris- 
ing and falling on his heaving breast, excited in all immediately a 
sympathetic response. 

Soon after, he related circumstantially the horrible experience of 
my poor mother in Hawaii ; and while he was telling the story which 
I had heard many times before and the lawyer and his friends were 
listening with profound attention, I began to look around me 
through the haze of the tobacco smoke. 

Above the mantel-piece, a symmetric pair of the wide-spreading 
antlers of the American elk, burdened with bows and arrows, pipes, 
tomakawks, and other relics of the aborigines of the country, 
attracted my eye, and in their artistic arrangement relieved some- 
what the disgust and disquietude I felt in my incomprehensible sit- 
uation and surroundings. 

Against the long wall of the office on my left, at right angles to 
the mantel, a book-case filled with books ; and on the top of it a 
number of busts of men and casts of unknown beasts and birds : 
following which with my eyes, I was induced to turn my head. 


88 


JANE JANSEN. 


Against the wall opposite the fire-place and the elk-antlers, an- 
other book-case surmounted with busts and casts and at the end of 
it a peacock in full plumage, mounted so naturally with glistening 
glass eyes, an easy pose of the head and neck, and a perfect balance 
of the body of the bird and its long drooping train of eye-spangled 
feathers, that while I sat in silent admiration of its graceful figure 
and beautiful plumage, I thought it might be living and looked till 
my eyes were weary to see it move. But it did not ; and I turned 
my eyes for relief to the faintly perceptible grotesque shadows on 
the wall of the lawyer and one or two of his friends who sat before 
the fire and intercepted the light of the blazing coals more lumi- 
nously apparent than the gas-jet depending from the ceiling ; and 
lowered them down, down, till they rested in awe on the silent, mo- 
tionless figure of a staring negro man, with his arms stiffly extended, 
standing rigidly erect in the angle formed in the corner of the room 
by the two big book-cases. Was he living, or was he dead — like the 
peacock, and stuffed and mounted in a manner so natural as to de- 
ceive? Or was he only a statue — like the busts on the book-cases, 
made of plaster and paint, with glass eyes set in his head, and wear- 
ing clothes to complete the deception ? Or was he only a shadow ? 
I strained my eyes to detect the slightest motion in his eyes or 
frame, and to discern every detail of his immobile face and person. 
But I could see not the slightest tremor in his outstretched arms, 
nor the slightest movement in his eyes and chest. And yet the 
figure was so life-like, in its unnatural posture, I knew it was not a 
shadow — I knew it was not a statue painted and dressed — but 
whether or not it was a dead man stuffed and set up like the pea- 
cock, or a living man standing for some reason unknown to me and 
in an attitude impossible to me but for a few minutes, I could not 
determine. I began to feel my blood run cold. I could not move. 
I lost consciousness of all that was going on around me and yet I 
was conscious of staring at the horrible figure of the negro in the 
corner— that my terror was increasing— that my breathing was be- 
coming more and more rapid — that I must cry out — 

And scream I did ; fortuitously in the lull of horror which follow- 
ed the completion of my father’s narration; and the eyes of all 
taking direction from the fixed stare of the little screamer, the 
standing figure of the negro at once became the focus of general ob- 
servation. 

My father in alarm attempted to rise, and, staggering in his 
crutches, was on the point of falling, when Mr. Holland and Dr. 
Johnson caught him and re-seated him on his chair. 

“ Do not be frightened, my grave little woman,” said the lawyer to 


JANE JANSEN. 


89 


me ; “ and do not be disturbed, Skipper Jansen,” he added to my 
father. “ the negro in the corner has been mesmerized by Dr. 
Johnson to convince the skeptical among these gentlemen of the ex- 
traordinary power of endurance of the hypnotized subject. 

“ Some time before you came into the office, the doctor put the 
young man under the influence of his great subordinating will and 
set him up in the corner as you see, to remain in the unnatural po- 
sition for an hour ; and when you entered, we were waiting the expi- 
ration of the time, smoking and cracking jokes between drinks ; and 
ever since we have been oblivious of the negro in our interest in you 
and your daughter and your harrowing story of your good wife’s 
sufferings in Hawaii. 

“Now, Dr. Johnson, if you please,” continued Mr. Holland, look- 
ing at his watch, and turning to the man of science ; “ your subject 
has been standing in the position you placed him exactly one hour 
and fifty-one minutes ; and I dare to say that all are satisfied with 
the exhibition. Let him lower his arms and nurse a paper baby, 
take the bumble-bees out of his hair, get drunk on water, kiss a 
book for his sweetheart, or do what you will, to amuse the grave 
little woman and make amends for the fright you have given her.” 

Dr. Johnson then went to the negro and spoke sharply to him and 
made him go through a number of strange performances before me; 
but I could not get over the nightmare of seeing the negro stand- 
ing so long in the corner like a dead man stuffed, and the more I 
saw that was strange to me and unnatural, the more I shuddered 
and shrank away from everybody in the room, not excepting my 
father in the strange character he assumed to me, aroused by the 
intellectual men around him and stimulated by drink. 

At length, while Dr. Johnson was engaged in waking the negro 
from his mysterious sleep, the front door of the office was opened 
and closed, and a well-dressed slender boy with a pale studious face 
appeared in the haze of tobacco smoke — the light of the fire and the 
gas-jet combining to illuminate his person distinctly and surround 
him with a halo. My whole being underwent a change the moment I 
beheld him in the peculiar blaze of glory formed by the bright light 
and the tobaco smoke, and I sat in an ecstacy of happiness, where 
a moment before, I had been in. indescribable misery, feeling a loath- 
ing I had never felt before. 

The boy stood looking about him with his bright eyes as if vainly 
endeavoring to infer from the circumstances what had been going on 
in the office, when Mr. Holland, observing him, said, “ Ah, my son, 
I am glad you have come. Take this grave little woman down to 

L 


90 


JANE JANSEN. 


the house, and put her in the care of your mother. Show her all 
vour butterflies and other curiosities and make her as comfortable 
as possible. Jane — I beg your pardon, my grave little Grecian god- 
dess — Miss Jansen, let me present to you my son, Master Philemon 
Holland, or Phil, for short. I think you will get along very well to- 
gether, for however old you are, my little woman, by reason of your 
birthright and its blazon on your brow, he is at least ten years older 
than his father in dignity and deportment, and freedom from the 
waywardness and wickedness of such old boys as you have been 
surrounded with this evening.” 

1 extended my hand to the boy, who, fully head and shoulders 
taller than myself, seemed to me to be about twelve or thirteen years 
of age ; and when he took and shook it, and was about to drop it, I 
held fast to his, saying, “ No, not yet, Master Phil, if you please ; 
not until you have presented me to your mother.” 

We went out of the office hand in hand together. I was weak and 
faint from the effect of the vitiated atmosphere I had been breathing 
so long, and sick at heart ; but when we got into the crisp night air 
beneath the cloudless firmament of sparkling stars, I revived in a 
few minutes and became giddy in the intoxication produced by the 
influx of the cold pure air into my lungs, and clung to Phil for the 
double purpose of supporting myself and expressing my confidence 
in him and my kindly feeling for him. 

I do not know that either of us spoke during our walk from the 
office to the residence of Mr. Holland, nor how long we were on the 
way ; but I do know that the time spent was a heartbeat of the 
most delirious joy, and that it marked an epoch in my existence. 

We found Mrs. Holland in the parlor, sitting in a rocking chair 
with her feet on an ottoman, reading a magazine by the light of a 
pink-shaded gas-jet at her side. A lady of six and thirty, or there- 
about, she was dressed in heav}^ black silk which rustled with 
every movement, trimmed with a profusion of laces, and adorned 
with diamond brooch and ear-rings. In size she was under the me- 
dium of American women, with a heavy head of auburn hair, blue 
eyes, a pink-tinted complexion, and sharply -chiseled shapely fea- 
tures — a lady somewhat pretentious in her dress and formal and 
undemonstrative in her elegant manners, but prepossessing in the 
natural charms of her person. 

Without rising from her chair, she extended her left hand to me 
and drew me gently to her side ; when, detecting the odor of tobacco 
smoke on my clothing, she pushed me as gently from her, compress- 
ing her nostrils and elevating and lowering the tip of her nose to a 
degree that surprised me, in her facial expression of detestation. 


JANE JANSEN. 


91 


“ Ah, my dear child, you have been in that horrid office,” she said 
to me, as she turned partly toward me and raised her eyes to the 
level of my shoulders, where the appearance of my scarf lying 
loosely around my neck and hanging over my shoulders arrested her 
upward glance. “ Let me take off your wraps and lay them aside 
till they are rid of their abominable odor. And such a beautiful 
scarf to be polluted, it is a sin and a shame. Why, my dear child,” 
continued Mrs. Holland, removing my scarf and holding it in the 
bright light before her in admiration — her curious eyes evidently 
having got the better of her sensitive nose, “the needlework in this 
is really exquisite and the design singularly beautiful.” 

“ I am pleased to hear you say so, Mrs. Holland,” I replied, “ for 
the work is my Aunt Melissa’s, a New Year’s gift to me, and the pat- 
tern mine, from a study of several of the beautiful ferns of our 
mountain home.” 

“ Your aunt then is a marvel in her way, and you, my child, a 
prodigy in yours.” 

“ Oh, no, no, Mrs. Holland, not that. A prodigy is a little boy or 
girl of three, or four, or five years of age who astonishes everybody 
in composing music, or in playing on some difficult instrument, in 
learning languages, in acting on the stage, in solving mathematic 
problems, and the like; while I was nearly eight when I made this, 
and I have been learning to draw and paint from my mother ever 
since I became big enough to hold the pencil and brush in mv 
hand.” 

“ Then, you are a genius,” said the formal lady, drawing me to her 
and looking carefully at my whole make-up and scrutinizing my 
face. 

“ Not that either,” I replied. 

“ But probably you do not know what a genius is? ” 

“ Yes, I do ; for I have been working and studying incessantly for 
over three years in the hope of meriting some day the glorious dis- 
tinction of being a genius.” 

“ And what or whom, pray, do you consider a genius ? ” 

“ It is a man or woman who sees something nobody else sees, and 
then makes everybody else see it in wonder in a work of art.” 

“ And who, pray, in your opinion is worthy of the name of 
genius ? ” 

“ I used to think the greatest genius that ever lived was Hok- 
usai.” 

“ Dear me ! I never heard of him in my life. Hokusai ? Who 
was he? ” 

“ He was the most distinguished of the artists of Japan— a per- 


92 


JANE JANSEN. 


feet wonder in his way. I have three big volumes of his works, and 
have copied them all, several of the most grotesque many times. 
But I do not like him now — indeed, I cannot bear the sight of the 
works of any of the characteristic artists of Japan.” 

“ And what has changed you, my child ? ” 

“ I do not know ; and my mother says she cannot account for it, 
for she is devoted to Japanese art and so skilful in imitating the 
style of the best artists of Japan that her work commands a higher 
price in the market than that of the Japanese, by reason of her atten- 
tion to detail and the delicacy of her touch ; but my father says it 
is because blood is thicker than water : that, while I was born in the 
harbor of Yokohama and my first impressions of art were received 
in Japan, I was born the image in mind and body of my mother’s 
mother, who was a Greek by birth and lineage and an artist by pro- 
fession.” 

“ Then, in your estimation now, the greatest genius the world has 
ever seen was not the Japanese Hokusai, but the Greek ” — 

“ Phalanx of sixteen thousand, followed by the Legion of the Ro- 
mans and the Army of the Moderns marching in the foot-prints of 
their predecessors,” I replied without hesitation ; for I had had fre- 
quent conversations with my mother and aunt on the very subject, 
and simply uttered what I had formulated before. 

“Well, my child, if you are not a prodigy and not a genius, you 
certainly are an interesting child to me as an object lesson in inheri- 
tance and education in accordance with it ; and I will profit by it by 
permitting my son to follow the natural bent of his mind and body 
in opposition to the wishes of his father and myself. He takes 
strangely to philosophy and poetry, which of all the tendencies in 
this practical money -getting age are the least likely to secure him a 
competency and honorable distinction.” 

“ I do not think so,” said the boy, who, having gone out of the 
room while his mother and I were discoursing, returned with his 
arms filled with glass-covered boxes. “ Goethe was a philosopher 
and a poet, and no greater name perhaps appears on the beadroll of 
fame of the nineteenth century ; and Bacon was a philosopher and a 
poet, and I am sure, mother, in your estimation he was the greatest 
genius that ever lived ; for I have heard you say a thousand times 
that you believed he was the only man in the world who could have 
written the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare, and that he must 
have been their author.” 

“Well, well, my boy; I will not discuss the matter with you. 
When your father, with all his force of character gives you up to 
your natural inclinations and calls you a self-willed cast-iron devil, 


JANE JANSEN. 


93 


there is little use in my putting in a word.” 

Whereupon, Mrs. Holland, showing a little displeasure and disap- 
pointment in her face in despite of an effort to appear cheerful and 
disconcerted, resumed her reading ; and the willful boy with the 
gentle manners, having beckoned to me with his head over the boxes 
in his arms to follow him to a corner of the room, I did so, and w 7 e 
were practically alone in the large room. 

“Now, Miss Jane, take down these boxes carefully one at a time 
and lay them on the floor. Then I will light another gas-jet at 
hand, and show you some of the most beautifully painted objects in 
the world which I know you will appreciate, for, from what I over- 
heard you say to my mother, you can draw and paint and have an 
ambition to be some day an artist worthy to be called a genius.” 

The boxes were laid on the floor, the gas was lighted, and the boy 
and I sat down on the rug. 

“ Call me Jane and I will call you Phil,” I said to him in a whis- 
per, laying my hand on his ; having looked, however, first over my 
shoulder and found that his mother could not see us by reason of 
an intervening centre-table with a large vase of ornamental fern- 
fronds and grass-plumes on it. 

“ With pleasure,” replied the boy. 

Then one box after another, he showed me his collection of butter- 
flies which was contained in them, and told me their common and 
scientific names, and how he had caught some with his net and 
raised others like a brood of chickens from little eggs, until, after a 
series of moultings or changes which he called metamorphoses, they 
came out perfect moths or butterflies ; and how he had killed the in- 
sects and stuck pins through their bodies and spread their wings and 
dried them and arranged them in his cork-bottomed glass-covered 
boxes; and how much pleasure he took in studying nature in the 
raw before it had been cooked by bookmakers and mashed and 
spiced and displayed in big and little dishes to suit their artificial 
appetites ; and how he was saving all his dimes and quarters to buy 
a microscope ; and what he was going to do with it— when he was 
interrupted by his mother, and the delightful dream I enjoyed in 
looking at him and listening to the simple story of his pursuits and 
hopes, was at an end. 

“ Phil, my boy, your dog is sniffing at the door. Do let him in to 
say good-night, before he begins to scratch off the paint. And look 
to your boxes that the dog does not set his paws in them— put them 
up in the corner.” 

I arranged the boxes and Phil went to the door and opened it, 
and with a bound the dog came in. 


94 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ Oh, you beauty ! you perfect beauty ! ” I cried out in a burst of 
enthusiastic appreciation when I beheld the animal, a white and 
black greyhound of the largest size. 

“ You lovely, lovely creature ! ” 

Phil put his arms around the neck of the long and tall graceful 
animal to check his course across the room lest he might tumble me 
over. 

“ No, no, let him come, Phil. He will not hurt me. And I must 
put my arms around him, too. Oh, I used to think that next to 
man and woman the most beautiful of living things was the horse, 
but I shall never think so again, having seen this perfect embodi- 
ment of grace and beauty I Do let him come ! ” 

The boy released his hold ; and keeping close to his side, and say- 
ing in his ear, “ You must be good and not put your big dirty paws 
on the young lady who admires you so much,” the boy and the dog 
approached me and stood in front of me so close to me that I could 
have put my hand on the head of the animal; but I did not, so en- 
grossed was I in regarding him with the sense of sight that the sense 
of touch was wholly in abeyance. 

The dog looked up into my face, and when our glances met, I felt 
that he and I were the best of friends from that moment ; and 
when he suddenly reared on his hind legs and towering above me 
laid his fore paws gently on my shoulders, I stood firmly and sup- 
ported his partial weight easily and relieved Phil of any further 
anxiety about the dog and myself. Then he got down and laid his 
head against my breast, and I hugged him and caressed him to my 
heart’s content. 

Mrs. Holland, having risen when the dog came in, kept her eyes 
on me and showed in her countenance a little disquietude ; but sup- 
pressing a yawn now and then, I believe she wished to retire, but 
felt obliged to remain in the parlor in charge of me until sent for by 
Mr. Holland. 

At length, taking out her watch and looking at it drowsily in the 
light of the fire, she said, “ Dear me, Phil, it is midnight. You must 
go to bed ; for you must be up at your usual hour in the morning 
and be off to school. Miss Jane will excuse you, and lie down on 
the sofa at my side and await the call of your father.” 

The boy, bowing to me, excused himself and went out of the 
room. I released my arms from the neck of the dog and listened 
breathlessly and with a sinking heart to Phil’s footsteps going up the 
stairs in the hall. Would I ever see him again? I never felt so 
lonely in my life ; and I did not realize until he was severed from 
me, by the command of his mother, how deeply interested I was in 


JANE JANSEN. 


95 


him and how necessary he was to complete my existence, I forgot 
the dog I forgot his mother — I forgot everything in the world in 
the realization of the fact that I was parted from the only boy I 
had ever met whom I affected. 

I obeyed his mother in a stupor which possibly she attributed to 
drowsiness ; and lying down on the sofa at her side, with my hand 
on the big dog’s head lying on the floor between us, I closed my 
eyes, sighed, sobbed, and fell asleep. 


XII. 

The following morning, when I awoke, I found myself alone in a 
big bed in a large richly-furnished room. I sat up and looked 
around me at the pictures on the wall, at the furniture, the bric-a- 
brac on the mantel, the fire in the grate, the rug with an Italian 
rural scene depicted somehow on it, and the rose-patterned velvet 
carpet on the floor ; but I saw nothing I had ever seen before except 
a pile of my familiar clothing on a chair near the bed. I tried to 
recall the circumstances of the night before ; but the more I per- 
plexed myself the more vividly did I recall the fiery visage of my 
father at the moment I felt the peculiar chill of estrangement course 
through my blood, and the figure of the negro with his outstretched 
arms as he stood in the corner of the smoke-beclouded office, and I 
wondered in horror whether he was living or dead, stuffed and 
mounted, w r ith artificial eyes in his head, and set up like the peacock 
on the case above him. The sun was high in the heavens. I knew 
the morning was far advanced. And impelled and directed by the 
sight of my clothing, I arose and began to dress ; when hearing a 
sniff under the door, I recollected instantly the sniff I had heard 
the night before, and all that had happened before and after ; and, 
having run to the door, I opened it and received in my arms the 
neck of the beautiful dog. And how glad he was to see me ! As 
soon as I released him, he sprang around me, and crouched and 
rolled over ; and, at length, wagging his tail and whimpering, he tried 
his best to talk to me as I talked *to him and return the pet names 
and endearing phrases I lavished on him. 

Presently a tidy maid with an embroidered pinafore came into the 
room and assisted me in making my toilet, and afterward conducted 
me to the breakfast room where I found in waiting the negro 
George Lee, in the dress of a table-servant and radiant with smiles, 
apparently the happiest mortal in the world. 


96 


JANE JANSEN. 


Evidently my breakfast had been kept for me while I slept ; for 
there was only one plate on the table and one chair beside it, and on 
looking up at the big-faced clock against the wall, I saw it was half- 
past ten. I thought of Phil— I was on the point of enquiring for 
him a dozen times; but I recollected what his mother had said 
about going to school and said nothing. 

I relished my breakfast greatly, for I was hungry ; and the big 
dog laying his chin on the table at my side, I gave him alternate 
bites with myself, and remained at the table fully three-quarters of 
an hour : telling George how he had scared me the night before, and 
all about Congo and Arabella, and how I would like to have a dog 
just like Phil’s if there were another in the wide, wide world, which 
I doubted. 

At length, I concluded my repast and chattering, when George, 
taking a letter from the mantel-piece, and making a grand display of 
his beautiful white teeth while he rolled his yellow -tinted eyes in 
his head, handed it to me. 

I read the address on it, 

“ Miss Jane Jansen, 

Care of Mr. George W. Lee, 

To be presented after breakfast.” 

With a little agitation I opened it, and read, 

u Dear Jane: — In token of my regard, please accept as a present 
from me the dog which you admire so much. I call him Garm ; 
but if you do not like the name, you can christen him again. 
George will give you a collar and chain and put him in your sleigh 
for you, and you will not have any trouble in taking him home. If 
you do not go before noon, I will see you on my return from school ; 
but if you do, I hope it will not be long until we meet again. 

I am, your friend, 

Philemon Holland.” 

The tears started to my eyes and I was about to burst into tears, 
when, looking up into the face of the good-natured negro, I was 
checked by the contortions his whole body was undergoing in his en- 
deavor to restrain his emotions while I was reading before him the 
first epistle I had ever received addressed to me, and that from a boy 
whom the negro believed to be interested as deeply in me, as he and 
everybody else could see I was in him. 

“ Yes, he likes me, George, and I like him,” I said to the negro 
gravely, to the relief of my rising emotion; and since you have 
been let into the secret by him and myself, you must not say a word 
about it to anybody for the world ; and when we get a few years 
older, and he will come to the mountain to see me, you must come 


JANE JANSEN. 


97 


with him, and Congo will catch a ’possum and Arabella will stuff 
it and roast it, and Aunt Melissa will bake pies and cakes, and we 
will fill you so full of good things, you will want to stay with us for- 
ever.” 

The maid came into the room then with my wraps, and having 
put them on me, directed George to take off* his apron and conduct 
me to my father at the Fisher House. 

On our way thither, George, in order to get the chain and collar of 
the dog which were in the office, took me into the chamber of hor- 
rors of the night before ; and while I recognized every feature 
of the room, I scarcely could believe my senses that it was the same 
apartment, so clean and bright and cheery was it in every particular, 
since the smoke had been succeeded by sunshine, the air renewed, 
the strange gathering of half-drunken intellectual men scattered, the 
negro wide awake and in the merriest humor, and the token of Phil’s 
regard for me in the beautiful big dog at my side. 

On arriving at the hotel, we found my father awaiting us seated 
in the sleigh at the door. His face was still fiery and I saw that he 
trembled, and I shuddered to approach him. 

“ Get in, my child. The snow is melting fast and we must be off*. 
And that is the dog the lawyer’s son has given you? Well, he 
is a superb creature for a verity. And a man need not be much of 
an artist to see his beauty and grace. But get in, my child, get in. 
We have not a minute to lose. Here, put the dog where he can find 
my crutches rather than my leg, if he should want to nip me on the 
way ; and sit down and hold fast to the chain, while these good men 
tuck in the robes around us.” 

But while this was being done, I burst into tears, crying out be- 
tween my sobs, “ I cannot go until I have thanked him for the dog. 
You will not — cannot Skipper papa, make me seem so rude. Oh, he 
has been so kind to me— if you only knew ; and I know dear 
mamma will thank you as well as I myself if you will wait only a 
few minutes longer till twelve o’clock.” 

My father began to soften; and the negro assuring him that he 
would bring Phil out of school in a few minutes, ran up the street 
and out of sight, and in a little while returned with the boy, his face 
in a glow from running and his striking features revealed to me for 
the first time. 

How my heart beat as he approached ! I thought my father 
would hear it. And when he took off* his hat and thanked my 
father for the great kindness he had done him, I saw with pleasure 
and pride, that the boy had won his esteem by his open-heartedness 

M 


98 


JANE JANSEN. 


and gracious deportment ; and when he lay back the robes and took the 
dog by the paw and said in a perceptibly husky voice, “ Good-bye, 
Garm : be a good dog . to your new mistress, for your old master’s 
sake,” my father was obliged to turn away his head and cough to 
conceal and suppress his emotion. 

I was affected greatly too ; and realizing that in depriving the boy 
I loved of his dog, I was causing him grief and pain, I said at once, 
“ 0 Phil, how can I take your dog and make you so unhappy ! I 
must not; and I will not. Here, Phil, take the chain. I will not 
cause you an instant’s suffering for all the dogs in the world.” 

“ I thank you, Jane, for your open-hearted confession of concern 
for my happiness,” replied the manW boy ; “ and when I assure you 
that however unhappy I am in parting with my old playmate, I would 
be infinitely more unhappy in taking him back from you, I know 
you will accept him as freely and as gladly as I have given him in 
despite of the emotion I have felt in saying good-bye to him. So, 
give me your hand without the chain in it.” 

I transferred the chain from my right hand to my left, and taking 
his extended right in mine, I shook it and pressed it gently as we 
said “ Farewell ” with our lips and eyes at once. 

With his uplifted hat in his hand, Phil stepped aside ; and my 
father, having cracked his whip, the horses started on our home- 
ward way, and I was again alone in the world, as I felt myself to he 
when parted from the boy I loved. 

I held on to the big beautiful dog during the whole of the long 
afternoon’s drive, for the triple reason that I shrank away from my 
fiery-faced father, and that I loved the dog for his own and his mas- 
ter’s sake. 

We reached the Gleason House in Ligonier at nightfall; and after 
supper, I saw the dog well fed and littered with clean straw where 
he was chained for safe-keeping in the stable of the hotel ; and at 
daylight the next morning, I had my arms around him and we had 
a romp together in the stable, around the hotel, and in the street in 
front of it until breakfast was announced. Then, after breakfast, we 
got into the sleigh again, and at ten o’clock reached home, where our 
new acquisition to the family was hailed with general joy. 

It took me a week to decide on a name for my beautiful dog, with 
the assistance of my father, my mother, and my aunt ; and of all 
the names suggested, and tried by sound and considered with respect 
to their associations, none satisfied me nearly so well as that by 
which the faithful hound of Odysseus was known ; and when my 
mother, having finished the first large portrait of the dog, pre- 
pared to subscribe a name, I said, “ A name of five letters,” and as 


JANE JANSEN. 


99 


I pronounced them one after another, my mother painted them ; and 
my beautiful souvenir of Phil’s regard was christened anew, 
“ Argos.” 


XIII. 

During the following spring and summer my poor little afflicted 
brother, Skipper Jan, Junior, wasted gradually in flesh until he be- 
came wax-like and seemingly translucent, while his big black eyes 
seemed to be increased in size and more brilliant than when in 
health. Essentially there was nothing left of him but a pair of 
monstrously large and lustrous black eyes, an articulate voice be- 
tween gasping and coughing, and an immaterial spirit of unrest per- 
vading the whole and affecting sympathetically his surroundings. 

My father and mother hung over his crib within doors and his 
ginrickisha without in silent solicitude, gradually wearing away 
themselves to shadows ; and every day when the weather was favor- 
able, we all gathered together on the highway in front of our mount- 
ain home, the weak and the strong, the wan and the ruddy, the 
crippled and the agile, to receive and give comfort as best we might 
in the little world of our own on the summit of Laurel Ridge. 

My poor little brother, in the extremity of his weakness and help- 
lessness, existed seemingly to' order and command and put all 
around him in action while he remained a quiescent and observant 
centre ; and whenever it was possible, all the hale and hearty 
were marshaled as soldiers before the immobile fantasy of human- 
ity, propped up with pillows in his little carriage, and drilled by 
the scarcely audible word of command that came from him in bro- 
ken whispers. 

We constituted a grotesque company of soldiers, sufficient to 
afford amusement to the most insensible of reviewers ; and I fre- 
quently suspected that a part at least of the interest my bright-eyed 
brother took in us was on account of our incongruity and bizarre 
appearance : as usually we were arranged in the following order and 
manner — 

First, Congo, the gigantic negro, with a colored horse-blanket 
thrown over his shoulders and buckled in front, carrying a rake for a 
musket. 

Next, Arabella, his wife, with her head enveloped in an orange 
turban, carrying the oven -peel. 

Then, Yalu, the Korean, without any artificial covering to his 


100 


JANE JANSEN. 


shocky head of black hair, carrying the pitch-fork. 

Then, Cora, his wife, in a white jacket and gown, not very unlike 
the garments worn by her in her native country, carrying a hoe. 

Then, my Aunt Melissa, in a sun-bonnet, and a black-figured lawn 
gown which was very becoming to her, carrying a broom. 

Then, myself, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a long 
gingham pinafore over a gingham gown, with one of my father’s 
canes. 

Then, Argos, with a flag tied around his neck. 

Then, Lily, with a fire-shovel. 

And last, little chubby Yoko, carrying a corn-stalk twice as tall as 
himself. 

At the word of command we marched around the ginrickisha of 
my brother, and my father and mother standing at his side, the one 
on crutches and the other leaning for support against him ; then, 
after halting, we formed in a line, and presented arms and shoul- 
dered arms and loaded and fired at an imaginary enemy ; and, after 
all our imaginary ammunition had been expended, we fixed bayo- 
nets and charged on our imaginary foes, and drove them across the 
highway; thence returning victoriously in disorder, those of us who 
were human cheered and hurrahed and he among us that was al- 
most human barked and ran around in circles in delight to the great 
consternation of little Yoko who occasionally w r as tumbled over by 
getting somehow or other in the way of the bounding beauty. 

Poor little Jan, fixing his eyes usualty on Congo, followed us in 
our movements and smiled on hearing our several acclamations of 
victory. 

But at length only the big black lustrous eyes of my brother 
looked, and we went through our evolutions at the command of 
my father in a feeble husky tone between sobs, and the respon- 
sive smile to our rejoicings appeared not on the pallid face in the 
midst of the pillows in the little carriage ; and the following day, 
when we were drawn up in martial array as usual, tears stood in the 
eyes of all as we waited for the word of command, but it came not ; 
and looking through our tears we saw the lids of my brother’s big 
black eyes closing as if in sleep . . . and we heard a low deep 

moan from the breasts of my father and mother . . . and we 

knew one and all without exchanging a word that the end of our 
little general had come in the midst of his mimic field of battle, as 
silently and peacefully as a planet sinks behind the hills in the 
western sky. 

We lay down our weapons silently and gathered around the 
scarcely living and the dead ; and after a general outburst of grief, 


JANE JANSEN. 


101 


we all went into the house; Congo and Yalu, supporting my father; 
my aunt and myself, my mother ; while Arabella and Cora brought 
in the ginrickisha containing the wax-like corpse of the little invalid, 
followed by Lily, Yoko, and Argos, seemingly equally affected either 
from a glimmering consciousness and comprehension of what had 
happened, or by sympathy with the sufferings of their superiors 
in intelligence and development. 

And six weeks after the burial of my brother, my poor dear 
mother, lying motionless on her bed, whispered to me, and in 
whispering breathed her last, “ Take my place, Jane, at your father’s 
side and cheer and comfort him till death. Kiss me. Farewell.” 

And ten weeks after the burial of my mother, my miserable 
father, so long broken in body and spirit, passed away almost as 
imperceptibly as my brother — his parting breath leaving half-spoken 
the name of his beloved son, the image ever before him of the hope- 
less wreck of his gloriously free and happy life on the rocks of a 
moment’s folly. 


XIV. 

My Aunt Melissa now found herself alone in the world, with the 
families of Congo and Yalu, (the first comprising two children, a 
boy, Zambesi, or Zambie, for short, now in his third year, and a girl, 
Melinda, now in her second ; and the second comprising, besides 
Lily and Yoko, another pair, Minnie and Chang, about the ages re- 
spectively of the African children,) besides myself, depending on her 
for the means of supporting life ; for while I was of some use to my 
mother in designing in a crude way for her skillful pencil and brush, 
I was of none to my aunt in her embroidery. She could not main- 
tain us all by her labor alone, in addition to that which our mount- 
ain farm yielded ; and realizing this fully and clearly from her past 
experience, her visions by night and day were filled with misery and 
misfortune, and she soon began to look haggard and distressed. 
One night when I lay abed and she doubtless thought me asleep, I 
heard her cry out in her anguish, “ Oh, what shall I do to find 
them all in food and clothing ! ” A few minutes after, I heard 
the clock strike two ; and opening my eyes and raising my head, I 
saw my aunt plying her needle and thread in the flickering light of' 
her expiring lamp. 

I did not let her know that I had heard her and seen her at work ; 
but when she came to bed I clasped her in my arms and soothed her 


102 


JANE JANSEN. 


to sleep with caresses. 

The next day I wandered about in perplexity, asking myself, 
“ What shall I do — what can I do to relieve my poor aunt ! ” My 
pictures were not marketable — I was too familiar with the exquis- 
itely finished work of my mother and grandmother, not to see that 
my pictures were little more than charcoal sketches — imaginings of 
merit perhaps but imperfectly bodied forth ; and I could not expect 
to fill the orders left at her death and still coming betimes from her 
eastern correspondents, until I had attained approximately her 
skill : as I replied to all. 

And from wandering about the house in perplexity, I wandered 
around the farm, accompanied by Argos ; till getting tired and 
hungry, I got into the highway for greater ease and expedition than 
I could find in the woods and fields. And as I walked along brood- 
ing over our straitened circumstances, the thought flashed into my 
mind that I was a traveler, trudging along footsore and hungry, and 
I could not find a resting-place, and food, and shelter for the night 
until I reached the village in the valley several miles away ; and 
hard on the heels of this, as the big stone house of our mountain 
home came into view, came another thought, that there stood a good 
hotel in the very place I wanted it, and others, doubtless, who passed 
it daily. 

My heart began to throb ; my steps became quicker and lighter; 
and when I neared the house, I began to run; and the front door 
by chance being open, I did not stay my steps until I had come to 
my aunt and thrown my arms around her, saying between my 
kisses and gasps for breath, “ I can help you. dear aunt! I can keep 
a wayside inn. Arabella can cook ; Congo can wait on the table ; 
Yalu can take care of the horses and carriages of the travelers ; Cora 
can be chambermaid ; and I can be the landlady and see that every- 
body is accommodated as well as any reasonable person could ex- 
pect on a mountain-top, and keep the accounts of the travelers ; 
while you can sit and embroider without any disturbance and with- 
out any further distress on our account. Will it not be grand ! And 
Argos shall earn his living, too. He will drive away the thieves and 
robbers and make the most disorderly of men behave themselves as 
they should in a mountain hotel kept by a little girl.” 

“ Your suggestion is good, my child,” replied my aunt ; “ your 
plan feasible ; and we will begin at once to put the house in order to 
entertain your guests in a manner to make them one and all adver- 
tisements of our hotel whithersoever they wander ever after, and 
bring you a continuous stream of custom. Yes, my dear child, we 
will begin at once : for you have lifted a crushing weight from my 


JANE JANSEN. 


103 


shoulders and I cannot bear up under it again. But your hotel, like 
a man or woman, should have a name, my child, that it may be 
spoken ot in accordance with its deserts — have you determined on a 
name yet for yours ? ” 

“ I have thought of one, but I will not determine until I find one 
which you heartily approve. It is * The Heart of Appalachia.’ 
What do you think of it? ” 

“ I am satisfied. It is appropriate in every way. And if you 
keep a good hotel as I believe you will, you will make the name a 
valuable property to yourself and your successors indefinitely.” 

But day after day came and went and scores of travelers passed 
eastwardlv and westwardly without stopping. At length, one even- 
ing, when I was walking in the highway, so discouraged that I was 
on the point of giving up the idea of keeping a hotel and adventur- 
ing in something else, an old Jew peddler, bending beneath the 
weight of his pack, approached me, and tipping his hat, politely en- 
quired how far it was to the next tavern. 

“ Twenty yards,” I replied ; and turning to Argos, who was 
sniffing about the stranger and curling up his lips in disgust, I bade 
him desist and get behind me. 

“ But I see no sign ? ” queried the peddler. 

“ Good wine needs no bush.” 

“ Then who is the landlord ? ” 

“ There is none.” 

“ No sign, no landlord, a strange hotel — who keeps it ? ” 

“ A little girl. This is The Heart of Appalachia and I am the 
hostess, Jane Jansen. Step in if you desire either food or lodging, 
or both.” 

“ I will, with pleasure ; for I am ready both for my supper and 
bed, being hungry and tired.” 

I preceded the peddler to the door, opened it, and bade him enter. 
Then calling Congo, I directed him to undo the traveler’s pack ; to 
conduct him to the back porch, and brush off the dust from his 
clothing and shoes ; to take him to No. 5, and see that he was pro- 
vided with water, soap, and towels ; and then, when I should ring 
the bell, to show him the way to the dining-room. 

Happily, when I went to the kitchen to inform Arabella of the 
arrival of our first guest and direct her to put clean linen on the 
table and all the recently-polished silverware, I found her preparing 
chicken and waffles for our own supper and I was satisfied that, 
with the addition of an extra jelly or jam, our guest would get a 
good supper and be delighted with our board. 

And the man was delighted. 


104 


JANE JANSEN. 


Several times during his repast, I slipped to the partly-open door 
of the dining-room, to see that everything was going on well, and 
noted with pleasure the severely fixed features of the old man re- 
laxing more and more, till he sat surfeited, with a smile on his face 
that seemed in my fancy to reflect the circles and congeries of 
curves in the surplus of waffles piled before him, and a look of ab- 
straction in his gaze into the darkest corner of the room that seemed 
to go back to the days of his childhood when the first want of his 
organic nature was supreme and food and good were synonymous. 
With Congo, in his white turban and apron, towering behind him, 
he presented a particularly pleasing picture of satisfaction. 

The following morning, I was up at daybreak to arouse Congo and 
Arabella, and have the house in readiness to receive our guest at 
any time he saw fit to rise and request his breakfast. 

And again I had the pleasure of seeing the picturesque old Jew 
smile over a surfeit of omelet, buckwheat cakes, and maple mo- 
lasses, fried potatoes, a pitcher of cream, and a fragrant pot of 
freshly-made coffee. 

And when he had finished his repast and was ready to take up his 
pack, I handed him his account, in which in lieu of his unknown 
name, I had inserted a sketch of himself smiling. 

The old man took out his spectacles, carefully wiped the glasses, 
and, having adjusted them over his nose, scrutinized the bill with a 
look that rapidly passed from perplexity to pleasure, and read — 

“ The Heart of Appalachia, 2 May, 1879. 

Mr. [ Portrait inserted. ] 


To Jane Jansen, 

Dr. 

1879, 1 May, to supper for one, 

$0.50 

“ “ “ to lodging for one, 

0.25 

u 2 u to breakfast for one, 

0.50 

Total, 

$1.25 


“ Yes, Mr. Gershom Pearlesteine,” he continued, regarding the pic- 
ture of himself; “ I know him well; but for many a long year I 
have not seen him look so happy and so handsome.” Then turning 
to me, he added, “ Ah, you cunning little witch of a landlady, you 
can touch the heart of an old, old Jew; and she that can do that, 
has the touch of Midas, and the wealth of the world at her com- 
mand. Here is a five-dollar gold piece— please take out of it $1.25 
in payment of your bill, and accept the remainder in return for this 
revelation of Gershom Pearlesteine unto himself, which has added 
to his happiness and should be paid for and well. Please receipt 
your bill.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


105 


11 1 will receipt your bill ; but I cannot accept your money above 
the amount of your bill. I have not earned it.” 

tk You have, my child, and well. This picture of myself I shall 
prize as a treasure.” 

“ But I will not. The picture is but a trifle, and I will accept 
nothing but a trifle in return. The heart may be touched, but it 
must not be turned to gold.” 

At length, after a half hour’s wrangling the old man accepted the 
change I tendered, and opened his pack, and I selected a brush and 
comb for No. 5, which I considered a sufficient remuneration 
not only for the picture of the Jew but also for one of Argos and 
myself which I added. 

Then observing several embroidered handkerchiefs among his 
stores, I sent for my Aunt Melissa to come with samples of her work ; 
and, in a few minutes, I had them pricing each other’s wares excit- 
edly and making exchanges, until lo ! for the labor of an evening or 
two, my aunt had a store of orange and red bandana handkerchiefs 
for Congo and Arabella, Yalu, Cora, and Lily, and pins and needles, 
tape, thread, shoe-strings, hair-pins, pens, and other useful little arti- 
cles, sufficient for us for many months. And when they parted, my 
aunt had also an order from the old Jew which she considered 
among the most profitable she had ever received. It was for the 
finest and most elaborate work she could do. The Jew evidently 
could sell again in a market unknown to my aunt. 

The following evening about sunset a carriage was driven hur- 
riedly to the door and an orotund voice cried out, “ Hello ! land- 
lord ! ” so lustily, that we were all startled— Arabella, in affected 
fright, getting behind the kitchen door and hurriedly adjusting her 
new orange bandana around her head, and Argos barking. 

I sent Congo to the door; and when he opened it, I heard one of 
the men exclaim — 

“ Great Caesar ! ” 

“No, sir; Congo — that’s my name! at your service, sir,” re- 
sponded the gigantic negro. 

Upon which a second voice became audible in a loud and long 
scream of a peculiar character which made me tremble and caused 
Argos to bristle up and bark and show his teeth so ferociously as to 
alarm me still more. 

“ Stop, stop, your infernal Indian whooping ! ” said the first voice 
in a rebuking but good-natured tone. “ These good people here will 
think you a raving maniac whom I am taking to an asylum. Stop ! 
or I will get Congo to throttle you ! ” 

N 


106 


JANE JANSEN. 


Assured now from the tone of the first voice that the two stran- 
gers were making the uproar simply in the expression of exuberant 
good-nature and eccentric hilarity, I ventured to the door, holding 
fast to the collar of Argos, who, still bristling, accompanied me, and 
introduced myself to the strangers as the hostess of the inn, the 
accommodations of which were at their service. 

The strangers were abashed greatly by my presence and address, 
and blushing, stammered out a variety of beseechings for pardon 
which were more or less mock in their, grandiloquence and facetious- 
ness ; the possessor of the first voice, a large, florid-faced, blue-eyed 
and yellowish-haired man of thirty-five, neatly dressed in a busi- 
ness-cut Scotch plaid, laying the blame on his companion whom he 
called betimes the Sinner and the Whooping Comanche ; and the 
possessor of the second voice, a tall and slender, sallow, hatchet- 
faced man, with black hair and eyes, of five and forty, perhaps, and 
dressed in a business-suit of a becoming gray, laying the blame on 
the other whom he styled variously, the Saint, his Pard, the Hypo- 
critical Goody-goody, and the Sunday School Superintendent. 

At length, Yalu having approached to take charge of the horses 
and carriage, the strangers were diverted from their apologies and 
excuses to me to indulge in a rattling discharge of exclamations and 
enquiries upon and about the shocky-haired Korean, among which 
I distinguished the following, from one or the other, “ Holy Moses ! 
Did you drop or come up ? Geewhilikins-ginger ! ‘ Bless thee, 

Bottom ; bless thee ! thou art translated ! ’ ‘ Oh Romeo, Romeo ! 
wherefore art thou Romeo ! ’ The saints preserve us ! we are some- 
where, but where, for the life of me, I cannot tell from the inhabit- 
ants ! ” 

“ Step in, gentlemen, and I will tell you where you are,” I replied 
to the last ; and as they entered the wide hall with their satchels in 
their hands and traveling coats and rugs over their arms, I added* 
“ You are in the Heart of Appalachia. Will you have separate 
rooms or one with two beds ? ” 

“ One with two beds, if you please, my little landlady ; for it will 
take us all night to compare notes on the extraordinary features of 
this hotel if they continue to accumulate much longer, and we must 
be where we can talk — or die,” said the Sinner, sobering down to a 
quiet, affable gentleman. 

“ Congo, after wisping the dust from these gentlemen on the porch, 
take their baggage, and show them into No. 3.” 

I then went out to see that Yalu properly put the carriage on the 
barn floor above and the horses in the stable below and gave them a 
generous supply of water, oats, and hay for food and clean rye straw 


JANE JANSEN. 


107 


for bedding. 

At supper, my aunt and I were seated with our guests, who, in our 
company, were models of propriety in their manners, easy and 
graceful, and very agreeably entertaining in their conversation ; 
seemingly having a familiar acquaintance with everybody and 
eyerybody’s business in the outside world. They were commercial 
travelers, or drummers, of exceptional intelligence and refinement, 
and as full of romping, rollicking fun as two boys of ten or twelve. 

They were the best of medicine to my dear aunt, compelling her 
to smile and talk in ’spite of herself, and before we retired for the 
night, to laugh and antagonize them in raillery, till fitful flashes of 
her former mirthfulness appeared in her face; and oh, what kings 
of good fellowship they were to me ! I looked and listened — taking 
in every movement they made and every word they uttered in a 
happy conscious dream. 

The next morning, while I was waiting for my guests to rise, I 
recollected the success I had achieved in making out the account of 
the unknown Jew by inserting a picture of him instead of his 
name, and prepared similar bills, adding an imperial to the mus- 
tache of the rather broad-faced Saint and mutton-chops, or side- 
w’hiskers, to the hatchet-faced Sinner. 

And when they saw them, they roared with laughter and capered 
around in the wildest glee. 

“ But I have no mutton-chops,” said the Sinner, “ and the Saint 
has no imperial, why in the world have you given us these appen- 
dages ? ” 

“ Cannot you see ? ” 

“ No — not I.” 

“ Nor I.” 

“ Well show them to your sweethearts when you go home, and if 
they have the eyes of artists in their heads, they will tell you these 
appendages are all that is necessary to make you perfectly ” 

“ Say the word, if you dare,” cried the Saint, holding out his arms 
to me, “ and I will carry you off into perpetual bondage in ’spite of 
Argos and Congo and the unkempt Korean ! ” 

“ And I shall be obliged then to run off with your charming aunt ; 
and whew ! what a row No. 1 will kick up before she betakes her- 
self to the divorce courts of Chicago ! ” 

“ Handsome ! ” I said boldly, and running around the big centre- 
table, easily avoided the grasp of the overgrown playful boy. 

“ Now, my gracious little hostess, you must tell us who made these 
very creditable pictures,” said the Sinner, who could not take his 
eyes from his likeness which he held in his hand, even while he ad- 


108 


JANE JANSEN. 


dressed me and capered around ; “ your aunt or yourself? ” 

“ Your happy little hostess,” I replied. 

“ Then draw me a picture of your charming aunt and charge me 
for it what you will in your bill.” 

“ No, I will not — I will not make a commodity of my dear aunt 
in any way. She is not one of the belongings of the hotel ; but I 
will draw for you either Congo, or Yalu, or Argos, or myself, and 
charge you only — with remembering the Heart of Appalachia and 
its little hostess.” 

Strangely, however much the travelers were impressed by any- 
thing they had seen or anything that had occurred since they came, 
the sentiments which I uttered in my last remarks — the natural out- 
growth of my past familiarity with my mother’s paintings for the 
market and my present conviction that my drawings were not in re- 
ality of any commercial value — affected them the most; and they 
gave expression to their responsive feelings with such volubility and 
vehemence as to overwhelm me with confusion. 

To escape from which, I took up my pad of drawing paper and 
pencil and made a picture for each, containing an outline of the old 
stone house in the centre, with the face of Congo on the right, that 
of Yalu on the left, that of myself above, and the tread of Argos be- 
low ; and presented them to the travelers with my compliments. 

They accepted them with many thanks ; and having paid their 
bills and placed their receipts carefully in their side-pocket leather- 
backed paper-receptacles, they bade me good-bye with a thousand 
well-wishings — the Saint turning as he was about to get into the car- 
riage, and saying, “ I see, my dear little landlady, you have no sign 
on your hotel. You should put out one at once.” 

“ I am putting out two even now, as I put out one yesterday 
morning, the old Jew peddler, whom you met in the valley and who 
directed you hither. Saianara.” 

I uttered the last word — the Japanese for farewell — more from 
habit than intent ; but it caught the ear of the Sinner who was sitt- 
ing then in the carriage. 

“And do you speak Japanese, too, you little wonder?” he 
enquired in surprise. 

“ I was born and lived for several years within sight of Fujiyama. 
Let me have your pictures again for a moment, if you please.” 

And after including the groups I had made within the faint out- 
lines of a Japanese fan, with the merest suggestion of the summit of 
dear old Fuji above the white patch on my head, I returned them 
with the remark, “ Now, they are complete, with Japan in the back- 
ground. Saianara.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


109 


I watched them till they passed out of sight, returning the waving 
of their handkerchiefs with the hearty freewill of childish innocence. 

When I re-entered the house, I found Cora, the chambermaid, 
holding in her hand a letter addressed — 

“ To our gracious little hostess of the Heart of Appalachia,” and on 
opening it, I found the cards of the gentlemen which I keep among 
my treasures to this day, and four one-dollar bills, and a note in 
pencil on a scrap of a newspaper margin, “ Please give to your four 
servants, one apiece, for us, and oblige us greatly.” 

And so my career as a landlady of a mountain wayside inn be- 
gan, to acquaint me with many persons of as many peculiarities in a 
comparatively short time, to educate me in the great school of the 
world by coming in contact with it daily in an infinite variety of 
ways, and to assist materially in maintaining our family of twelve 
persons — or a baker’s dozen, including Argos — in comfort. 


XV. 

In the month of May, 1884, five years after the opening of the 
Heart of Appalachia to the public, I was practically a mature 
landlady, familiar with all the details of the business of a country 
hotel, and, having a good run of custom, was in well-to-do circum- 
stances, happy and contented. Suddenly I became possessed with 
a strange timidity in the presence of my guests, who generally were 
men in middle or past-middle life, and felt myself moved myster- 
iously in ’spite of myself, into a general condition of mental and 
physical agitation, which gradually increased to pronounced discon- 
tent with myself and surroundings and disquietude and uncer- 
tainty in my actions and movements. 

All the enchantments of childhood vanished ; for the innocence 
and simplicity of childhood had become conscious in the budding 
woman. 

I was suspicious of all, including my dear Aunt Melissa, who ob- 
served with sadness the strange reserve and reticence I assumed in 
our most confidential and private relations ; indeed, of all around 
me, I shrank from and shunned my dear aunt the most, for I saw 
that she more than all the others together regarded me with an 
anxious eye. 

I moped about moodily, frequently going alone into the great 
gloomy garret of the old house, to sit in abstraction awhile, and then 
rise in tears, without knowing why ; and I stole away even from 


110 


JANE JANSEN. 


Argos out of doors, aud wandered in the loneliest parts of the 
mountain forest surrounding, gathering the beautiful wild-flowers 
around me betimes, but only to throw them away a moment 
afterward. 

I was unhappy, and yet I was aware of nothing that distressed 
me — no misfortune had befallen me, and none had been unkind to 
me ; I was weak and unstrung, and yet I was free from pain and 
apparently in rugged robust health, of surprising stature for my 
years but still of girlish shape. 

And strangely an image haunted me continually, in my dreams 
by day and night, the image of Philemon Holland, the boy who had 
impressed me so deeply when I was a little girl six years before ; the 
boy who had given me the treasure of his boyish heart, his beauti- 
ful dog Argos ; the boy, whom I had thought of in kindness and 
talked of with the freedom of a child ten thousand times during the 
past six years, but whom I never mentioned now T ; the boy, whom 
my facile pencil heretofore could limn in an instant on my thumb- 
nail, the corner of my cuff, a scrap of paper no larger than a 
postage-stamp, but now could depict no longer satisfactorily — no 
longer agreeably — no longer recognizably. That boy must now be a 
young man of eighteen or nineteen ; and the face that haunted me 
could not be his. 

And heretofore when I could depict his familiar lineaments so 
accurately and so rapidly, I always thought of him as I had left 
him in health in Greenesburgh ; but now I was asking myself contin- 
ually, “ Where is he ? in sickness or health ? alive or dead ? ” 

On reflection, too, I shuddered to think that of all the names I 
had heard uttered by travelers in their casual conversations in the 
Heart of Appalachia, I had never heard the name of the distin- 
guished lawyer, the father of Phil. What had become of him? and 
my father’s business entrusted to him ? He certainly cannot be in 
Greenesburgh or any of the neighboring towns and cities. He must 
have died, like my poor dear brother, mother, and father ; or moved 
with his family, as Skipper Jansen did with his, somewhere — 

And when I recollected how long it took us to come from Japan, 
I realized the immensity of the world, and the hopelessness of 
imagining the place among an infinity where a loved one might 
reside. 

But the most harrowing thought that came to my troubled mind 
was that the boy so dear to me and now a young man might have 
forgotten me and love another ! 

Secretly I wrote scores of letters and notes addressed to the young 
man, before I finished one that satisfied me; and enclosing a picture 


JANE JANSEN. 


Ill 


of myself in the d ress of a young lady, with Argos at my side, and 
the lock on his collar represented in the shape of a heart, I address- 
ed it, “ Mr. Philemon Holland, care of Horace Holland, Esq., 
Greenesburgh, Westmoreland County, Penn’a,” and carried it to the 
village postoffice myself to be sure of its being mailed. 

Five weeks afterward I received my own communication from the 
dead-letter office, marked “ Not called for.” 


XVI. 

The most joyous month of the year was at hand : beauty, melody, 
and fragrance vied with one another for supremacy in the fields and 
forests around me, but I was an unimpressionable blank to the world 
around me — restlessly, aimlessly groping about in an increasing 
gloom — yearning for something so vague and uncertain as to evade 
definition — something without a circumference but with a fitful 
centre in the haunting image of Phil. 

I wandered farther and farther in my restlessness and disquietude 
from the insupportable confinement of the old homestead and the 
loathsome labor of my neglected calling ; and one bright morning 
in June, with Argos almost as melancholy as myself at my heels, 
I walked so far to the eastward in the highway, that, unconsciously 
responding to the weariness of my limbs, I sat down on a log in the 
airy shade of a scented birch by the road-side and laid my hand on 
the neck of Argos, sitting sympathetically silent and motionless at 
my side. 

Suddenly I was awakened from my aimless reverie by the move- 
ments of Argos — raising his head, pricking his ears, and looking 
keenly in the direction of a dense mass of undergrowth about eighty 
yards distant on the southern side of the highway. I heard and saw 
nothing to attract his attention, and was about to press my hand on 
his head in the expression of my assurance that we were alone, 
when a large doe bounded into sight from the thicket and sped like 
a flash in a course parallel to the highway, and in the direction of 
the Heart of Appalachia ; and in an instant Argos was in pursuit — 
and out of sight on the heels of the fleeing deer. 

I was in a quiver of excitement — in my fear lest the hound with 
his savage instincts aroused might catch and kill his natural prey, the 
harmless deer, and in my intense appreciation of the indescribable 
beauty of the deer and dog in the exercise of the powers with which 
they were gifted superlatively, I got on the log and stood on tip-toe 


112 


JANE JANSEN. 


to catch another glimpse of them ; when, doubtfully hearing a muffled 
cry for help issuing from the undergrowth from which the deer had 
bounded, I held my breath and looked in the opposite direction to 
that of the fleeing animals. 

I heard the cry repeated; and seeing a cloud of dust and smoke 
arise in the direction from which it came, I hastened to the spot. 

I found a partly burnt pile of logs in a clearing just beyond the 
thicket, which, from a sudden rolling together had taken fire anew, 
and was burning freely in several places ; and half concealed in the 
smoke, with his legs securely held between two logs near the top of 
the pile, I saw a man struggling violently to extricate himself — now 
pulling, prying, lifting, and tugging to separate the logs ; now, with 
his soft hat in his hand, reaching down into the pile, and extinguish- 
ing the glowing points of fire beginning to increase in number and 
size within his reach with alarming rapidity. 

At a glance I saw that he was a stranger — a young man of goodly 
size and shape, and of great vitality and vigor — his hair auburn, his 
face ruddy, and his muscular arms appearing below the roll of his 
shirt-sleeves as white and hard as ivory. I saw also that although he 
was dressed in the limited summer garb of a ipountaineer, he was 
not to the manor born and bred, and the agonizing thought flashed 
through my brain and daggered my heart, He might be Philemon 
Holland! 

I was about to ascend the pile to his side to add my strength to 
his, when he prevented me, in the most commanding tone I had 
ever heard ; warning me of the danger of being caught like himself 
by the logs the instant they would be put in motion, and mag- 
nanimously declaring that he would rather die a thousand deaths 
than have me run the risk he knew too well it to be. 

And having yielded to his commanding tone and manner — more 
perhaps than to his words and their meaning — in this instance, I 
passively obeyed him in his subsequent directions. I handed him a 
handspike which was leaning against a tree hard by ; and while he 
pried and pushed with it, I grappled in vain with a pronged stick for 
his axe which had fallen from his hands into the pile when he was 
caught in the awful trap. I then tore up the ferns around about and 
threw them between the logs to smother the fire as well as I could 
with the soil attached to their roots ; but, unhappily, not removing 
all the fronds, as they became dry in the forest furnace, they flashed 
into flames and kindled sparks higher up in the pile, igniting the 
young man’s clothing in several places, causing him to drop the 
handspike and extinguish the flames with his hat ; which, in a little 
while, burning itself in many places, fell to pieces from his singed 


JANE JANSEN. 


113 


and scorched hands. The wretched man uttered a half-suppressed 
shriek of despair, and settled, from his frantic efforts to extricate 
himself from the log-pile and save himself from the tortures of the 
increasing fires around and beneath him, into a silent resignation to 
meet his glaringly inevitable fate as became the Commanding man he 
seemed to be. 

I stood paralyzed by his inaction and silence, until, seeing a spark 
alight on his shoulder and start a widening circle of flame, which, as 
it revealed his scorched skin, and singed the hair of his head, I sud- 
denly found myself liberated from the enchantment of his com- 
mand, an independent being to think and act as it had been my habit 
from childhood, as it seemed best to me alone. I took off my 
jacket, which happily was a summer-weight flannel ; and, through 
the smoke cautiously ascending the pile to the young man’s side, 
I extinguished the circle of fire on his shoulder and put the jacket 
into his passive hands, with an injunction to use it; realizing, as I 
uttered the words, that he was in a semi-unconscious condition. 
Mechanically he grasped the jacket and held it — looking at me un- 
meaningly through his smoke-filled watery eyes, until, (while I was 
descending the pile,) he sank insensible — happily falling backward, 
with his back against the log above him, and his mouth open toward 
the sky to catch of whatsoever of fresh air might be wafted over the 
fire before his death. 

A flash of hope came to me from this circumstance : If I can 
keep the slowly burning logs in check a little longer, I may be able 
to part the pile and save the unknown stranger yet. I tore up ferns 
again, and, removing the earth attached to their roots, I piled it on 
the most threatening points of fire within reach. I worked with all 
my might, until, exhausted, with nails torn, fingers bleeding, and 
eyes aching from the heat and smoke, I realized that I was gaining 
little if anything of mastery over the fire and must resort to other 
means, or see the wretched man burn howsoever slowly, to a crisp. 

Water! water! I heard it tumbling over the rocks a stone’s throw 
away. Water ! water ! I fancied I could see it dimpling and smil- 
ing in the familiar pools below the falls ! But how to get it ? How 
to carry it from the mountain stream, to revive the fainting man and 
extinguish the fatal fire ? 

I ran to the stream. I put my bleeding hands into the water — I 
snatched at it in my despair to hold it and carry it in any available 
quantity. I was about to turn away and return to the burning log- 
pile, when, slipping on a stone, my foot went into the water, and I 
thought of my shoes as water-vessels— sufficiently large to carry 

0 


114 


JANE JANSEN. 


enough to dash in a fainting face and allay the pangs of a parched 
mouth and throat. 

And to and fro I ran, carrying water in my shoes and pouring it 
on and about the unconscious man ; until, the water betimes dripp- 
ing on my gown and becoming heavy with the increased saturation, I 
thought of it as a more capacious vessel than my shoes and put it 
into use as such immediately. 

And to and fro I ran, carrying nearly a bucketful of the precious 
fluid in my flannel gown, keeping the clothing of the imprisoned 
man saturated, and gradually extinguishing the fire around and be- 
neath him, until I thought I could venture safely on using the hand- 
spike as I had seen the stranger use it and part the pile sufficiently 
to enable me to drag him from his perilous position. 

Heeding also his words of warning, I went about the work very 
cautiously, ascending the pile at an end whence I could jump out of 
danger the instant I felt the pile move beneath me. I was not only 
without shoes but almost without stockings, and I ran little risk of 
slipping ; and having begun to pry in what I considered an advan- 
tageous position, I became more and more insensible to the danger 
of the situation I was in until I ceased to think of it altogether. 

Presently the pile yielded somewhat to my efforts — the slow fire 
having gradually diminished parts of the opposing logs and made 
the parting possible to my feeble strength ; and not appreciating any 
greater danger to myself with the encouragement I received from 
the slight motion I had imparted to the pile, and that which I re- 
ceived also from a sign of returning life in the unknown man, in the 
expression of his upturned face, I renewed my efforts, exerting my- 
self to the utmost. 

Again the pile began to quake. And suddenly the logs began to 
part and roll, and I was thrown down and from one to another, 
until, amid a stifling cloud of ashes, dust, and smoke bespangled 
with glowing sparks, I found myself lying face downward with my 
arms tightly wedged between two logs, and the handspike, which I 
had held in my hands, and which had been rolled along with me, 
alone preventing the logs from crushing my limbs into shapeless 
masses. 

The accident the stranger had warned me against had happened 
with the result he foresaw from that which had befallen him. 

I realized my fate the instant I found my arms immovable ; and, 
looking toward the part of the pile where the stranger had been to 
learn what had become of him, I saw that he had been cast from 
the pile and was lying on the ground presumably out of danger. 

The muscles of his face twitched — his right hand closed and 


JANE JANSEN. 


115 


opened. I saw that he was still alive, and I was satisfied — yes, to 
die for him, I thought ; but, I must say, that I scarcely realized 
what was involved in the thought. 

1 had a fairly good view ot his shoulders, neck, and face; and 
while I could not distinguish any of the remembered features of 
Philemon Holland in him, I >yould not admit to myself that it 
might not be he. 

Near his head, I saw my wet shoes; and through the crack in 
which my arms were held, I saw in one place the smouldering re- 
mains of my jacket, a black curling mass on which two porcelain 
buttons appeared, giving it the appearance of a monster’s head with 
staring white eyes; and in another, my wet gown, just beginning to 
burn in places where it came in contact with living coals, and emit- 
ting the peculiar odor of burning wool. And strangely, for the first 
time, I realized that I was in dishabille in the presence of a young 
man who might be the object of my adoration and affection for 
years — aye, not only in dishabille, but begrimed with mud and 
smoke from head to foot, and in a most unseemly position on the 
top of a log-pile in a mountain clearing. With a sickening sense of 
shame, I arranged my bedraggled skirts as well as I could with my 
feet and by shifting my body from side to side, and then cuddled 
into the smallest compass possible. 

As yet, the heat was not great and I suffered little pain from the 
compression of my arms ; but presently, with the rekindling of the 
smouldering logs after their last adjustment, the heat where it 
reached my body through the cracks became a torture; and the 
smoke betimes curling in little clouds in my face made me cough 
and choke and breathe with such difficulty that I lost all control of 
myself in a feverish frenzy. My thoughts came and went with mar- 
velous rapidity and with the awful ghastliness and oppression of 
nightmares. My father, mother, and brother appeared to me in ago- 
nizing situations, and I, bound hand and foot, must see them suffer 
without being able to afford them any relief. So the living, my dear 
Aunt Melissa, Congo, Yalu, and their families, Argos and the fleeing 
deer, and the Philemon Holland of my recollection, and the Phile- 
mon Holland of my conjecture were so many fearful and fantastic 
factors in the kaleidoscope of my awful visions. 

At length, after ineffable physical and mental anguish, a calm suc- 
ceeded the storm ; and as I lost consciousness, I seemed to sit again by 
the side of my mother on the deck of our outgoing vessel from 
Japan, watching with tearful eyes dear old Fujiyama descend and 
diminish toward the hazy horizon and finally disappear in darkness 
and tears. . . . 


116 


JANE JANSEN. 


As I learned afterward, the fleeing deer, having left the thicket by 
the side of the highway, entered the open road and continued on it 
till she came to the barn-yard. Here, seeing the young cattle pass 
into the cow-stable at the beck of Yalu, who stood by the open door 
with his hand upon it, bounded among the calves and entered the 
stable with them. Whereupon, Yalu, to secure the deer, pushed the 
swinging door ; and just as the iron bolt reached the middle of the 
opening, Argos, coming like a thunderbolt on the heels of the deer, 
struck it with his head, crushed his skull, and fell dead at Yalu’s 
feet. 

Congo saw the accident ; and realizing with his big spmpathetic 
heart the overwhelming effect the death of my dear dog would have 
upon me, at once set out to find me and break the news to me as 
gently as possible. 

Taking the direction from the course of the dog and deer, he hur- 
ried along the highway until he passed the limits of my usual walks, 
calling my name loudly and frequently ; and meeting no response, 
but an echo of his voice betimes or the cry of a startled bird, was 
about to return to the inn and raise the alarm of my possible bewil- 
derment in one or other of the almost inextricable thickets of 
rhododendron to be found on the flats and in the gulches of the 
mountain, or enter the forest on either side at random and continue 
his solitary search ; when he saw and recognized my hat where I 
had laid it aside when I stood with Argos by the log. 

Satisfied that he was not far from me, he ran here and there from 
the hat as a central point, shouting and hallooing in various ways to 
take advantage of the most penetrating sound, till he approached 
the bounds of delirium in his excitement. 

Suddenly he sniffed the odor of burning wool — that arising from 
my burning jacket and gown ; and following the significant scent 
with renewed vigor and restored judgment, he soon came to the 
slowly burning log-pile and discovered the stranger, smoked, 
scorched, and disabled, lying on the opposite side of the pile to that 
on which I lay, and gesticulating in such a frenzied way that he 
seemed to Congo to be insane from his sufferings and sullenly 
speechless. 

Overcome by this last disappointment, and disturbing element to 
his reason, poor Congo mechanically drew the stranger to a safe dis- 
tance from the log-pile, and, moaning in his anguish, was about to 
set off again in his search of me, when he saw my well-known 
shoes, wet and muddy, on the ground before him ; and, having his 
wandering senses recalled by the familiar sight as they had been, a 
few minutes before, by the familiar smell of burning wool, he con- 


JANE JANSEN. 


117 


eluded from the circumstances by a jump of his peculiar intellect 
that I had wet my feet and clothing in the stream hard by, and hav- 
ing come to the log-pile to dry my clothing, had taken off my shoes ; 
and, having climbed upon the smouldering logs, had been caught and 
burned, before the scorched and disabled stranger, who having heard 
my cries, and come to my relief, could extricate me at the imminent 
risk of his life. 

Whereupon, shrieking with horror, he turned to the pile, and peer- 
ing through the cracks soon espied my slowly burning gown, and at 
once began to tear the logs apart with his hands in order to drag out 
the smouldering mass. 

At this juncture the stranger, by a supreme effort of his almost 
exhausted powers, dragged himself to my shoes and took one 
in his hands. Then, having dragged himself to Congo and 
clutched him by the leg, he restrained him sufficiently to attract his 
attention to my shoe. This done, he cast the shoe over the log-pile, 
and pushing Congo in the direction indicated by the flight of the 
object, succeeded in diverting him from his violent efforts to get at 
my gown, and inducing him to follow the shoe. 

Congo ran to the other side of the pile ; and having caught sight 
of me lying near the top, the faithful giant was at my side in an in- 
stant with his strong hand on the handspike projecting near my 
arms ; and in another, was on his way cautiously descending the 
pile, with the lever in the grasp of his right hand as a staff and my 
limp and apparently lifeless body in the clasp of his left. 


XVII. 

When I recovered my consciousness, I was looking up into the 
face of Congo, moaning piteously over me and weeping like a child, 
his tears falling on my forehead and cheeks like great drops of rain. 

I was lying on the ground near the stream from which I had dip- 
ped the water with my shoes and gown ; and as I heard the gurg- 
ling of the mountain stream, I realized presently where I was and 
what had happened before I succumbed to the heat, smoke, and nox- 
ious gases of the burning log-pile. 

My first enquiry was about the stranger ; and as I learned from 
the excited and incoherent speech of Congo the particulars of his 
condition, commingled with an account of the fate of Argos and my 
deliverance, I was tossed in a tempest of emotions. I could not rid 
myself of a recurring thought that the stranger might be Philemon 


118 


JANE JANSEN. 


Holland. 

On attempting to rise, I found my arms were so benumbed as to 
be powerless. Soon, however, with the assistance of Congo, I was 
on my feet ; when seeing myself smoky and muddy and disordered 
in the extreme from head to foot, and without my usual outer gar- 
ments of hat, jacket, gown, and shoes, I sank again to the ground in 
a confusion of shame and fear lest the stranger might recover suffi- 
ciently to crawl within sight. 

Assured by Congo, however, that the poor fellow was unable to 
drag himself away from the log-pile, my sympathy was aroused 
again for him, and I forgot myself in the engrossing nature of my 
impulses and endeavors to assist and relieve him. 

I directed Congo to carry him another hatful of water and bid 
him be patient in his sufferings. I directed him also to get my 
shoes and adjust them on my feet as well as he could. They were 
as limp as rags and felt very disagreeable ; but the soles were good, 
and would protect my feet from thorns and stones in walking home 
for help. 

Again assisted to my feet by Congo, I bade him remain with the 
stranger while I returned to the house. 

Before setting out, however, I could not resist an encreasing desire 
to see the stranger again and satisfy myself as to his condition and 
determine if possible his identity. 

This I was enabled to do by availing myself of the undergrowth 
and brushwood around the log-pile, while Congo attracted the stran- 
ger’s vision to himself. But I saw only to be aroused to greater ex- 
ertion in the stranger’s behalf, holding in abeyance his identifica- 
tion till a favorable opportunity. The poor fellow was sitting appar- 
ently immovable with his back against a tree, the pallor and expres- 
sion of his face indicating that he was very faint. And this Congo 
observing, the kind-hearted negro laid the sick man prone on the 
ground, and raised and lowered his arms to restore as rapidly as pos- 
sible the circulation in his brain. 

I avoided the highway by following familiar byways and paths, 
stealthily inspecting the open spaces in the thickets before venturing 
to run across them ; and when about half way home, I heard Yoko 
calling me from the summit of a huge mountain boulder to which 
he had climbed in an evident search of his missing mistress. Sum- 
moning him to me, I briefly told him what had happened and di- 
rected him to run to the village of Jennerstown and bring Dr. Mans- 
field at once to the inn. 

Leaving abruptly the path which I was following, the Korean boy 
was soon out of sight ; and I on my way relieved and refreshed by 


JANE JANSEN. 


119 


the performance of a part of my mission. 

At length, having come to the rear of the old homestead, and 
avoided the barn-yard lest I might be overcome by the sight of the 
body of my dear dog, I darted unobserved through an open door in 
the back part of the house, up the back stairs, and into my room ; 
where, happily, I found my aunt and Arabella in a state of bewil- 
derment on account of the death of Argos and my unaccountably 
prolonged absence. 

The sight of my dear aunt in tears and confusion affected me 
greatly, and I met her looks of amazement at my plight amid kisses 
of endearment and sobs of lamentation, with a gush of tears. 

This over, in a few minutes I told my aunt and Arabella what had 
happened, and directed the latter to bid Yalu hitch the horse in the 
wood-sled, and, having filled the bed with clean rye stray, go as fast 
as he could to the log-pile in the new clearing on the Belleview tract 
and bring the injured man on it to the inn. “ And tell him particu- 
larly, Arabella, to be careful in lifting the man on the sled, and in 
driving over stones and ruts and ridges on the way,” I added with 
so much concern that I revealed to my aunt a solicitude in the per- 
son of this stranger suspiciously at variance with my declaration 
that he was unknown to me. 

I saw the point of an interrogation in her eyes ; but good and 
trustful woman if ever there was one in the world, she gave it no ex- 
pression in words. 

I felt myself blushing in her gaze, however ; and stammering in 
confusion, I asserted positively that I did not know him ; and add- 
ing, that he was a young man wearing the dress of a woodman and 
having an axe with him, but having the voice, the bearing, the lan- 
guage, and the consideration for others which characterize the well- 
bred for generations, I seemed to give her a sufficient reason for my 
especial solicitude in his behalf. I kept from her, however, my sus- 
picion that he was Philemon Holland ; and feeling guilty of con- 
cealing anything deliberately from the good woman who found the 
fulfillment of her dearest hopes in me, I sank in shame and contri- 
tion into her arms, and my bosom heaving with an emotion I never 
experienced before, I confessed that I had concealed from her the 
thought that possessed me — the remote possibility that by dint of 
recurrence in the midst of my exciting experiences had passed the 
stage of probability, and become a fact in its effect upon me. 

“ Beware, my child, beware ! ” replied my aunt, with profound 
sympathy and solemnity in her voice and manner. “ You are not 
so much your matter-of-fact mother, that you are wholly unlike your 
father, whom a fancy wrecked in the heyday of his life. You wish 


120 


JANE JANSEN. 


this stranger to be the friend of your childhood, and the wish of 
your heart rises to a thought in your head that he is. You cannot 
rid yourself of the wish, and you cannot rid yourself of the recurr- 
ing thought. Both are intensified by the trials you have had to-day, 
exciting your feeling and fancy to the highest pitch. Uncon- 
sciously, too, you are affected by the accidental association of the 
dog and the stranger : the latter alarming the deer ; the deer sepa- 
rating you and the dog, leading you to the log-pile to be involved 
with the stranger in the extremities of danger and distress, and 
hurrying Argos to your home to alarm us in his death and bring 
you and the stranger a timely deliverance.” 

I was relieved somewhat by the confession to my aunt, but not 
released from the tyranny of my apperceptive prepossession ; and 
the more my dear aunt endeavored to drive the thought from my 
mind, the more she embedded it in my being ; and when at length, 
washed and dressed anew, and my bruised arms saturated with 
arnica and camphor, I was left alone, I betook myself to a window 
whence I could see the farthest in the direction of the accident and 
await the coming of the stranger on the sled in the care of Congo 
and Yalu. 

Yes ; I admitted to myself, as I peered through the open window, 
I wish the stranger will prove to be Phil. 

And well I might; for I had revealed that much of my secret self 
to my aunt, while, in fact, my whole being yearned for that happy 
termination of the trials of the day. 


XVIII. 

In a few minutes, after taking my position at the window, I saw 
the familiar head of the farm-lmrse, Jerry, coming over the hill, 
then Yalu at his side leading the horse, then the head and gigantic 
shoulders of Congo walking behind the sled, and, at last, the form of 
the stranger lying on the straw in the bed of the sled. 

My heart beat tumultuously. He is coming ! He is coming ! Oh, 
what can I do for him ! 

I hurried to the room I had designated to my aunt and Arabella 
for his reception ; and having seen that bed, bureau, washstand, 
chairs, rugs, blinds, bric-a-brac, and pictures were in faultless form, 
I was about to descend to the front door when a glance at a drawing 
on the mantel suggested a substitution of one which I had framed 
and hung in a conspicuous place in my own chamber and regarded 


JANE JANSEN. 


121 


with daily devotion for years — a sketch of myself and Argos as we 
came from Greenesburgh years ago, surrounded with a fantasy of 
faces in every conceivable position, and all of them revealing the fea- 
tures and lineaments of Philemon Holland as I could review them 
at will at any time afterward with the distinctness of the reality be- 
fore me. 

In a few minutes, with the assistance of wondering Arabella, the 
exchange was made and I was at the front door, to welcome the 
guest of all guests that comes never more than once to a woman’s 
door. 

The stranger, raised to a sitting posture in the sled by Congo, saw 
me in the doorway, and recognizing me at a glance, bowed and smil- 
ed and smiled and bowed and looked up into my eyes ; while I 
stood in a stare of ineffable satisfaction, realizing that he was not so 
dangerously hurt as I had imagined ; that he appreciated all I had 
done in his behalf ; that he rejoiced in my escape without any 
appreciable injury ; and that — a fitting capping-sheaf to the shock 
of happy determinations — there was nothing in his features, form, or 
manner to disturb in any way the idea that engrossed me as to his 
identity. 

With little difficulty he was carried upstairs on the back of Congo 
and laid on the bed, as Dr. Mansfield, with Yoko by his side in the 
buggy, drove up to the door. 

“ Well, well, my young lady,” said the facetious old physician, ad- 
dressing me as he got out of the vehicle, glancing at me betimes 
while he watched Yoko tying his horse to the post. “Caught in a 
trap, I hear. And a trap baited with a young man, too. A little 
sooner than I expected. But the sooner, the better; so be it, the 
young man prove worthy the prize. Tut, tut, my dear, do not 
blush ; you know, I have said a thousand times that there are only 
three perfect women in the world and one of them is a little — I beg 
your pardon — a big blushing — There, Yoko; that will do; and the 
next time you get the measles, I will double the dose of castor oil in 
the expression of my appreciation of your skill as a hostler. In the 
meantime, take this and buy yourself a jack-knife and carve your- 
self a fortune out of any suitable timber you can find in the neigh- 
borhood. Now, Miss Jane, if you please, roll up your sleeves and 
strike— not me, but an attitude, and say, ‘ There, disciple of ^scu- 
lapius, Galen, and Hippocrates, if you do not believe I have been 
caught in a man-trap, behold these black and blue bruises, here, 
there, everywhere’ — What! you cannot raise your arms? Well, 
really, I did not think from your appearance, the matter was so 

P 


122 


JANE JANSEN. 


serious. Permit me”’ 

Evidently the worthy physician had come to the conclusion on 
seeing me in the doorway, apparently uninjured, that Yoko had 
magnified the accident to him, and that his services were required 
now merely to relieve the reaction of intense excitement and appre- 
hension : to accomplish which a smiling face and a pleasant word 
are more potent than potions and pills. 

Somewhat abruptly, however, I informed the good physician that 
I had sent for him to relieve not myself but a more seriously injur- 
ed stranger, who, having been removed on a sled from the log-pile to 
the inn, was then speechless and helpless in bed. And as I spoke, I 
conducted him upstairs to the door of the chamber in which the in- 
jured man lay. The doctor opened it, and closed it behind him in 
silence, and I went to my room to await in a state of anxiety bor- 
dering on distress the physician’s possible recognition of the stran- 
ger and the result of his examination of his injuries. 

At length, after an hour’s weary waiting, I heard the physician de- 
scending the stairs ; and no sooner had he reached the floor of the 
hall, than I was at his heels a living earnest interrogation, utterly 
oblivious of self, that must be answered. 

“ I hope he is not hurt badly.” 

u His legs have been pinched terribly, my child ; but neither flesh 
has been cut nor bone broken, and I have no fears of his ultimate 
recovery in this particular. The paralysis is muscular rather than 
neural, arising from the pressure of the logs without and the en- 
gorgement of the blood within, and will disappear gradually with- 
out leaying any bad effect.” 

“ But ” — 

“ His voice will come back to him, too, by degrees. I feel no anx- 
iety on that score. Irritated by the dust, smoke, and heated air of 
the burning pile beneath him, and congested by coughing and call- 
ing, the parts of his larnyx involved in uttering sounds are inflamed 
and swollen ; and doubtless, they will resume their normal condi- 
tion and function in a few days, if ” — 

“ Do not stop. Tell me all ; for I am interested deeply in him.” 

My candor overcame the doctor and he continued. 

“ If the more delicate membrane which lines the large and small 
cavities of the lungs, has not been irritated to the point of inflam- 
mation by the heated air, and noxious gases, the product of com- 
bustion, which necessarily must have entered his chest betimes dur- 
ing his long confinement in the situation you have described : a puff 
now and then when he could not refrain from gasping for breath be- 
tween his spells of coughing. In that case ” — 


JANE JANSEN. 


123 


My aunt coming into the hall interrupted the physician. 

“ I was about to say, Miss Graham, that, in view of the serious- 
ness of the young man’s injuries, his friends should be informed at 
once.” 

“ But he is an absolute stranger to us,” interjected my aunt. 

“ A stranger to you ! ” exclaimed the physician in surprise. “ And 
to you, too, Jane? ” he enquired, a little quizzically, looking into my 
eyes as if he expected a reply which he was to construe by the rule 
of contrariety usually applicable to a woman’s answers to queries 
about persons of the opposite sex in which she is interested. 

“ 1 may have seen him before to-day,” I replied without hesita- 
tion ; “ but I cannot say, until I have learned his name.” 

“ Well, this is strange — strange indeed ! I thought, Jane, you and 
he were acquaintances at least. If not, how came you to meet awav 
off in the woods? By chance, eh? And get yourself into a burn- 
ing log-pile to get him out ? By chance, eh ? No matter, however ; 
the world is full of wonders wherever there are young women and 
young men, and old people can do nothing but stare.” 

Accustomed to badinage and jests of this kind from the good 
physician — and many others, for that matter, including casual 
guests at the mountain inn — I was not affected by it ; and avowing 
the truth of what I had said, I requested him to tell me the name of 
the stranger if he knew it at all, which I began to suspect from my 
prepossession as to his identity. 

“ Well, well, since it is necessary to inform his parents of his con- 
dition at once. His name is Robley Benham. He is the only son 
of Henry Benham, the wealthy coffee-merchant of Baltimore. He 
is a student of medicine and a great lover of out-door life ; and his 
father recently having purchased for him the Belleview tract of land 
— in part adjoining the Graham tract, I believe — the young man has 
come out to spend the summer as he like3, knocking about as a 
mountaineer, roughing it with the natives, hunting, fishing, and, 
according to latest reports, trapping — I beg your pardon, Jane; but 
the fact is, I cannot resist it. The circumstances are so significant — 
catching you and being caught himself at the same time in it. 
There, now, do not hang your head, my child, and turn as pale as 
ashes; for from my knowledge of him and his father, he is a worthy 
young man in every respect — a noble fellow, with a head and heart 
in keeping with his fine physique.” 

But while the physician spoke, the walls of the hall began to re- 
volve around me. A strange darkness enveloped me. I seemed to 
be sinking to the floor and floating in the air at the same time. I 
heard distinctly every word that was uttered ; until, at length, the 


124 


JANE JANSEN. 


sound of the physician’s voice died away, and I floated through the 
open door and along the highway till I strangely vanished to myself 
as I approached the log, where I had sat in the morning with Argos 
by my side. 


XIX. 

With the utterance of the name “ Robley Benham,” the bubble of 
my heart-hope burst. My strength left me. My muscles relaxed. 
My senses swam ; and I sank in a swoon. 

I was prevented from falling to the floor, however, by my dear 
aunt, who, having divined the effect the physician’s revelation would 
have on me, was quick to observe the blanching of my face and took 
me in her arms at once. I was laid then on a sofa in the parlor by 
the twain ; and the blood soon returning to my head in a recumbent 
position, I recovered my consciousness at the same time. 

The doctor was on the point of going home. I heard him say, 
“ Poor child, the strain has been too much for her to-day, healthy 
and hardy though she is. But have no anxiety about her, Miss 
Graham ; she will be up tomorrow morning as bright as a sunbeam 
and as cheery as a chipmunk. And with respect to the telegram — I 
will attend to that myself. Expect me at nine or ten to-night — as 
soon as I can get around from old ’Squire Biddle’s — you know, per- 
haps, his eldest daughter, Susan, is not improving — lung trouble — 
inherited, you know. Beautiful evening — glorious weather, this. 
Good-bye.” 

The clatter of his horse’s hoofs and the rattle of his buggy died 
away in the distance, but his words “ Poor child ” were repeated in 
my ears till I grew weary of their recurrence and turned my head to 
rid me of them. 

Poor child ! poor child ! 

As long as I was possessed of the idea that the stranger might be 
Philemon Holland, I was a woman, to do and endure all that a 
woman can and will for the man she loves — to suffer the tortures of 
the burning stake to save him from harm, and die the most miser- 
able death to save him from destruction. But now that I was dis- 
possessed of my exalting and expanding dream, I was a child again 
— a poor weak child — pitifully weak and fearful, weeping for I knew 
not what. 

“ Kiss me, aunty dear. There is nothing left me in the wide, wide 
world but you.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


125 


u And Congo, dear,” added the good woman, between her kisses. 

“ And Yalu.” 

And so she went on enumerating the members of our mountain 
household and kissing me, until she had included all, down to the 
latest arrivals in Congo’s family, Timbuctoo, or Tim, for short, and 
Dido, when I felt encouraged to dry my eyes, sit up, and look 
around me. 

I saw the parlor was dark with the shades of evening ; but in the 
gloom I soon discerned in a silent cluster around me, Congo and 
Yalu, and their respective families, almost breathlessly awaiting my 
recovery. They had stolen in with a common sympathy as intense 
and sincere as perhaps only children and the undeveloped of man- 
kind can feel. 

I responded at once to this natural expression of affection from 
those who, while they looked upon me as their mistress rather than 
my aunt, yet considered me a companion, entering into all their 
schemes and pursuits with a sympathetic heart as well as a directing 
head, and sharing their joys and sorrows as if I were one of them in 
the fullest sense of the words. 

I called the youngest of the black and yellow toddlers to me ; and 
having knelt on the floor in order that they could reach my neck, I 
bade them put their little arms around me and kiss me ; and in as* 
suring them that I was better and would soon be well, I really be- 
came stronger and reassured that the world was not the void I 
believed it a little while before. 

At length, the elder persons having gone out of the room to 
attend to their several duties, the children were left around me ; and 
one after another, and all together betimes, began to talk and gesticu- 
late ; their long-suppressed beings finding expression in a babel of 
words and a bee-swarm of pantomime around me : the subject of all 
which was the loss of Argos which they shared with me, the cap- 
tured deer which they had seen through the cracks in the hay-mow 
above, and the burial on the morrow of the body of Argos in a box 
for which Yoko already had made the measurements. 

For the time being, my individuality was lost in that of the 
group ; but after supper, when I was left alone in bed, I reviewed 
the events of the day, again and again, with increasing grief and 
gloom, in which the loss of Argos involved the loss of Phil- 
emon Holland forever. Until at length, after a gush of tears, I 
fell asleep and did not awaken until all were astir in the 
morning. 


126 


JANE JANSEN. 


XX. 

In fact, when I came down stairs, I found in waiting Yalu, with 
all the little folk huddled around him, to apprise me at the first 
opportunity of an event which had taken place in the night and 
filled them with the greatest wonder and concern. 

The doe during the night had given birth to twin fawns and then 
died. Yalu found the little orphans when he went into the barn ; 
and having called and consulted his wife, he put them in a large 
basket lined with a soft blanket and brought them into the house to 
await my inspection and wishes with respect to their further dispo- 
sition. 

My sympathy for the motherless fawns took complete possession 
of me at once ; and in contemplating them in the basket, and con- 
sidering them from every point of view in consultation at breakfast 
with my aunt, I was relieved of my distress over the loss of Argos ; 
and after learning that Dr. Mansfield, when he left the house about 
midnight, had reported Mr. Benham out of danger, I was no more 
interested in him than if he were an ordinary guest in the inn. 
After assuring myself that he had every attention paid him by 
Arabella and Congo, I rejoined the children and lost my secret self 
among them again in preparing for the double burial of the dog and 
deer, the pursuer and the pursued, the prowler and the prey. 

Yoko was the carpenter of the party, and to him fell the task of 
making the coffins out of old boards from about the barn and his 
hoarded stock of bent and rusty nails ; while Zambie, assisted by 
the smaller boys, dug the graves on the summit of a shapely knoll 
in the forest a few hundred yards from the house ; and all the girls 
gathered piles of moss and flowers to deck the graves. 

At length, these labors having been performed, Yoko. and Zambie 
put the bodies in the coffins and nailed the lids ; and Yalu, having 
brought out Jerry hitched to the sled, to serve as a hearse, the cof- 
fins were placed on it side by side. It was arranged then that Yalu 
should lead the horse to the graveyard ; that the new-born fawns, as 
the chief mourners, should be placed in the back of the sled ; that 
I should walk next behind the hearse, and the others follow in single 
file in accordance with their respective heights. 

This done, the funeral set out : the beautiful little orphaned ani- 
mals in my charge, and the diverse moods, actions, and expressions 
of the children in the procession, diverting my mind from the loss of 
Argos and the disappointment of the day before, and enabling me to 
bear lightly a burden of grief which otherwise would have bathed 


JANE JANSEN. 


127 


me in tears and sunk me in the deepest melancholy. 

As the procession passed the inn, my Aunt Melissa, Congo, Ara- 
bella, and Cora stood with uncovered heads on the porch— -all 
silently regarding us except tender-hearted Congo, who could not 
suppress his sobs and ejaculations of sorrow. As I afterward 
learned, too, Dr. Mansfield and Mr. Benham, supported by the phy- 
sician, looked down on us through the open window of the latter’s 
chamber ; and both were affected deeply by the exhibition, for they 
saw in it infinitely more than any of us could divine. 

With the fall of the first shovelful of earth on the lid of my dear 
dog’s coffin, however, I burst into tears ; and not being able to re- 
cover my composure, I begged Yalu to take me home on the sled 
with my tender charge. 

And the only solace I found in my wretchedness during the long 
summer’s day and evening was in brooding over the fawns ; calling 
Arabella to my side every half hour to feed them diluted cow’s milk 
or fondle them to sleep ; for I was unable yet to move my hands and 
much less raise my arms without suffering great pain. 

The following morning. I stole off to the woods alone and 
approached the newly-made graves with a heavy heart. And again 
my thoughts were diverted and my feelings relieved by an unlooked 
for circumstance. 

Astride the graves stood the crudest of wooden effigies repre- 
senting the animals beneath them. They were strangely readily rec- 
ognizable as a dog and a deer — nay, more than that, a dog closely 
pursuing a deer; for the smaller and longer-tailed effigy was close be- 
hind the larger and shorter tailed. 

They were evidently the work of Yoko, provided with a saw with 
which he cut large and small saplings into proportionate bodies, 
legs, necks, heads, ears, and tails ; an auger, with which he bored 
holes into the bodies and heads for the insertion of the legs, necks, 
ears, and tails ; and a hatchet with which he fitted the latter for in- 
sertion into the former, rough-hewed the bodies and heads, blazed 
the well-known spots on the dog, and marked the mouths, nostrils, 
and eyes of the twain. To my artistic eye, trained from infancy to 
observe and delineate form with the most scrupulous exactness, 
these images were the ultimate of grotesque caricature and shocked 
me not only as barbarous monstrosities but also as mockeries of my 
misery. This sprawling simulacrum, the poor panic-stricken doe, 
that pursued by my dog sought a sanctuary in my own home, and, 
dying from exhaustion, left her tender offspring in my care ! And 
this, Argos, the living link that connected me with Philemon Hol- 
land — the symbol of my happiness in the past and hope for the 


128 


JANE JANSEN. 


future ! This, the centre about which my being revolved ! 

The contrast between the figures before me and the images in my 
mind could not be greater. Iconoclasm and satire could go no fur- 
ther. 

I turned from the fantastic firstlings of the young Korean’s art in 
a stupefaction of revulsion — my fancy and feeling annihilated. 

On my way home, I met Yoko. 

He had seen me emerge from the forest and come out to receive 
my felicitations on his achievements — a suppressed smile being ap- 
parent in his chubby cheeks, and the light of looked-for joy in his 
bright black eyes. 

Innocent boy ! the very embodiment of good-will toward me and 
zeal in my behalf! little did he dream that in erecting his rude im- 
ages of wood, he had torn down mine constructed of the finest fibres 
of my existence. 

“Oh, Yoko!” I exclaimed, with rising emotion, in a struggle to 
conceal the hurt he had inflicted unconsciously, and reveal my 
appreciation of his intent ; “ I have seen the dog and deer which 
you have made and set up on the graves of dear Argos and the poor 
mother of my little pets.” 

“ And did you know without anybody telling you which w r as the 
dog and which the deer? ” asked the boy eagerly. 

“Oh, yes, Yoko; the dog was behind, with a' longer tail and 
shorter legs than the deer, and spotted.” 

The boy fairly glowed in triumph at this recognition of his ideas 
in his work, and added in ineffable satisfaction, “ There is still an- 
other way by which you might know the dog from the deer, and 
make no mistake.” 

“ What is that, Yoko? ” I enquired, looking up in surprise. 

“ And did you not see? ” 

“No; I assure you I did not,” I replied with increasing surprise 
and interest. 

“ Well, Miss Jane, I thought you would see it right away. The 
dog is made of dog-wood, and the deer is not.” 

My sense of the humorous and the ludicrous got the better of my 
injured feelings, and I resumed my walk to the house and the 
charge of the fawns in a veritable suspense between smiles and tears. 


XXI. 

About a week after the occurrence of the events which I have re- 
lated in the past several chapters, I received a letter from the father 


JANE JANSEN. 


129 


and mother of Robley Benham. It was a most affecting expression 
of the tenderest parental gratitude for the preservation of their son 
through what they termed in various sentences “ my self-sacrificing 
spirit, my most heroic act,” “ my brave deed revealing a noble 
spirit,” and “ my glorifying instrumentality,” which, as I read them, 
made me shrink from myself as from an intruding stranger, and put 
such a serious aspect upon the accident that I felt a new alarm, 
which, however vague and indefinite, caused a slight sensation of 
chilliness to pass through my body and my hands— now free from 
numbness— to tremble. A postscript added, “ In token of our heart- 
felt appreciation of the inestimable service you have rendered us, 
and as a slight recompense for all you have suffered in consequence 
of your heroic deed, please accept the enclosed, with our best wishes 
for your welfare now and hereafter.” 

I opened the sheets of the letter and found between them a New 
York draft for a thousand dollars, papable to my order. 

I looked at it for a moment in amazement and horror. 

I enclosed it again between the sheets, and, looking cautiously 
around to see that none observed me, I folded the letter, and thrust 
it in my pocket, and sought the seclusion and gloom of the garret to 
contemplate what had happened as evidenced by the letter and its 
enclosure, and what would happen in consequence, in all which I 
was involved in a great measure unconsciously, and, in a manner, 
accordingly, to excite my keenest apprehensions. 

And doubtless the causes that compelled me to seek the seclusion 
and gloom of the garret to consider the situation, compelled me to 
decide on a line of action in a very few minutes — namely, to con- 
tinue in seclusion, as far as my secret self was concerned. 

I went to my chamber at once; and having written a reply to the 
letter I had received, thanking the grateful parents for their kind 
words and good intentions and declining to accept any reward or 
token of a money value for anything I might have done or suffered, 

I enclosed the draft and sealed and addressed the envelope. Then, 
realizing the value of the enclosure, and the better to keep my own 
affairs as much as possible to myself — even from my dear aunt — I 
put on my hat and set out to the village postoffice to mail my letter 
myself, and had it registered properly, that I might be assured of its 
reaching its destination in due time. 

In the meantime, Robley Benham had been recovering gradually 
the use of his vocal organs and legs, until he could express his 
wants and wishes in whispers, and with the aid of crutches and the 
assurance of Congo at his side, move about in his room, and, 

Q 


130 


JANE JANSEN. 


to relieve the monotony of his confinement, hobble and shuffle 
along the upstairs hall, enter the unoccupied rooms, and amuse him- 
self with their several displays of paintings and drawings made by 
mv grandmother, my mother, and myself, embroideries made by my 
aunt, and curios in wood, stone, bone, shell, cocoa-nut, bamboo, 
silk, ivory, and bronze collected principally in Japan, Korea, and 
the Hawaiian islands. In this way, and from the remarks of Congo, 
in explanation of the articles examined, he became acquainted in 
a great measure with the history of the family and evinced an es- 
pecial interest in everything that pertained in any way to me indi- 
vidually that gratified Congo greatly, as he reported to me in confi- 
dence. 

At length, the eleventh day after the accident, he was able to con- 
verse in a husky voice and come down stairs and go about the 
house and sit down at the table with little or no assistance. But in 
despite of our thrilling experience together and all I had learned 
about him since, he seemed to me to be more of a stranger than 
when I saw him in the burning log-pile. In his faultless city dress, 
he presented a very different appearance from that in a mountaineer’s, 
begrimed with the smoke and ashes of the forest furnace. The 
effects of his exposure to the sun and fire had passed away, and the 
fairness of his complexion shone in the glistening skin of his face, 
neck, and hands, as I had seen it in glimpses below the roll of his 
shirt-sleeves and in the fiery circle on his shoulder during his con- 
finement in the log-pile. But it was neither the change in his dress 
nor that in his complexion that estranged him ; it was a certain mu- 
tation that had taken place in myself. 

I avoided him as much as I could without revealing my secret in- 
tent to do so ; and busying myself with my pets, my pencil, and the 
business affairs of the mountain inn and farm, I succeeded in keep- 
ing aloof from him without exciting any suspicion. 

Gradually, however, I was moved by his genial open-heartedness, 
his courteous and considerate demeanor, and the sympathetic inter- 
est he took in the affairs of one and all ; and when by chance one 
day, on my return from a brief visit in the village, I found him feed- 
ing and fondling my dear little fawns, I entered his presence without 
reserve and never afterward felt any shyness or timidity in his com- 
pany. 

And soon I learned how w r e happened to meet at the burning log- 
pile. Several days before, the woodmen employed by Mr. Benham 
in making the clearing, having drawn the logs together with oxen 
and piled them lengthwise, set fire to a dry hollow log in their 
midst, trusting to the flames to spread thence to other dry logs here 


JANE JANSEN. 


131 


and there in the pile and consume the green with themselves. This 
was done to some extent, leaving great gaps and openings in the 
pile between the partially burnt green logs ; and when Mr. Benham 
visited the pile on the morning of the accident, with his axe on his 
shoulder, he thought from its appearance that the fire had burned out 
by separating farther and farther the surfaces of the green logs until 
they ceased to give one another the necessary heat to effect combus- 
tion, and sat down on a projecting butt to enjoy the delights of his 
wildwood environment. While sitting thus in silence, the doe 
came into the clearing, and catching sight of Mr. Benham, bounded 
off toward the highway where I sat with Argos ; and in the excite- 
ment of the moment, to follow the flight of the animal with his 
eyes as far as possible, he mounted the pile, stepping hurriedly 
from log to log, and in doing so set them to roll together inwardly 
and entrap him in the manner already described. At first, though 
most painfully pinched by the charred surfaces of the large logs 
pressing against his thighs, and coughing violently on account of 
the dust and ashes which he inhaled from the rising cloud around 
him, he thought little of the matter; but when he found that he was 
held fast by the logs and that there were hundreds of living coals in 
the ashes making their appearance in the pile beneath him and 
glowing with increasing brilliancy every moment, he realized that, 
unless rescued in ten or fifteen minutes at the farthest, he would be 
burned. He then called for help as lustily as he could in the inter- 
missions between his coughing ; his cry reaching my ear as I stood 
on the log, and taking me to his side at once, as I have related. 


XXII. 

During the next four years — or until I was far in my nineeenth 
y ear — Mr. Benham was an inmate of the Heart of Appalachia: 
several months of the first winter and spring excepted, when he at- 
tended his final course of lectures at the Georgetown Medical Col- 
lege in Washington and received his degree as a Doctor of Medicine. 
He had rooms in the big stone house for himself and two of his em- 
ployees, a gardener and fruit-grower from Rochester, New York, 
Hiram Dalby, and an experienced stock-breeder from Lancaster, 
Pennsvlvania, Thomas Mooney ; and a great part of the barn set 
apart for such horses and vehicles as it was convenient for him 
to have near his place of abode. His father and mother, moreover, 
visited him betimes, and lodged in the mountain inn. I became 


132 


JANE JANSEN. 


most intimately acquainted with him, his employees, and his par- 
ents ; and in a very great measure, in consequence of this intimacy 
and association, my life was an uninterrupted succession of happy 
experiences, pleasant achievements, and gratifying successes in a 
hundred ways. In fine, at the age of eighteen and a half, the hori- 
zon of my existence was as extended perhaps as that of any young 
woman in the land. 

When Dr. Benham — or Robley, as I soon came to call him famil- 
iarly — learned from his father that I declined to receive any gift or 
token of any money value in return for any service I might have 
rendered him, or in alleviation of any suffering I might have under- 
gone in consequence of my imprisonment in the log-pile, he re- 
frained from alluding to the subject and endeavored to do all he 
could for me and what he was pleased to call frequently my tripar- 
tite household of Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans, in a way I 
could not object to. He did this, too, I am sure now from my inti- 
mate knowledge of him, not so much as a matter of deliberation and 
design, as an expression of his sensitive nature and innate con- 
sideration for the feelings of others. I soon realized the effect of 
his actions, and recognizing gratefully the many kindnesses and ben- 
efits of a more substantial character I was receiving at his hands, I 
accepted them and enjoyed them fully. 

One day, soon after his recovery, to my surprise an upright piano 
of the finest make was set down on the porch by a teamster from 
Johnstown. Dr. Benham had sent for it to keep in practice, as he 
said, while in the country ; and since his room was crowded with 
furniture already, he begged it might be permitted to stand in the 
parlor, where others, if they saw fit, might make use of it as well as 
himself. I was caught in the trap before I realized I was in any 
danger ; and in due time, though not endowed with even an ordi- 
nary ear for music, through the patient and persevering instrumen- 
tality of Dr. Benham, I learned to play an accompaniment to his 
favorite songs and even join him in a few duets. Betimes, too, 
guests were in the house who danced, and, in consequence of the 
music in the parlor and the necessity of taking in even the abso- 
lutely uninstructed to complete a set, I was led to take the first step 
in dancing, and to continue until I had learned all the square and 
round dances known to the guests. 

Unknown to me, too, Dr. Benham had sent to his address the 
leading daily newspapers of New York, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, 
half a score of magazines, including the best home and foreign art 
journals, as many more periodicals, relating to his special pursuits, 
and box after box of books, which generally were adapted to my 


JANE JANSEN. 


133 


growing comprehension and expanding life ; and under divers pre- 
texts, I was induced to read them. Thus I acquired a variety of 
knowledge which otherwise I perhaps would never have gained in 
the seclusion of my mountain home, and lived as closely behind the 
ever-moving line of the times as if I were in the heart of a great 
city. 

Then along betimes came in-door and out-door games and sports, 
cards, chess, croquet, lawn-tennis, and the like ; and I was led into 
one and another of these social diversions by my kind and consider- 
ate master until I acquired sufficient knowledge and skill to play a 
commendable game with him and others, chance guests who were 
more expert. 

But however much I profited by and enjoyed the musical instru- 
ment, the papers, magazines, and books, and the games which Dr. 
Benham provided, I was interested infinitely more in his diversified 
pursuits ; for, the necessity of providing for my numerous household 
being constantly pressing and increasing with the growth of the two 
quartettes of children, Yalu’s and Congo’s, I was ever on the alert to 
make money and put it to the best use for our mutual good. I am 
convinced, too, now in reviewing all the circumstances, that Dr. Ben- 
ham having observed my daily struggle to provide profitable em- 
ployment for all, embarked in the business he did, seeing that it 
would be the best in many ways for me to engage in in connection 
with my wayside inn. 

At any rate, after securing for himself the services of the exper- 
ienced fruit-grower and gardener, Hiram Dalby, and the stock- 
breeder, Thomas Mooney, he induced me step by step to follow in 
his footsteps, and, without any additional expense to him, avail my- 
self and dependents of the opportunity of acquiring a thorough 
knowledge of the two great occupations which can be carried on re- 
muneratively on a mountain top where tilling the soil for grain is 
barely profitable with the best of crops that can be grown. When, 
accordingly, he prepared the ground for an orchard, vineyard, berry 
patch, asparagus, and rhubarb beds, and truck garden, I did the 
same by exchanging the labor of Yalu, Yoko, and Zambie for the 
knowledge and superintendence of Mr. Dalby ; and when he sent 
his order to one of the leading nurserymen of the country selected 
by Mr. Dalby, mine was included at the lowest wholesale rates. In 
fine, whatever Dr. Benham did — in going into every detail of the 
business, reading the best books on the subject, discussing this meth- 
od and that variety with each other, and referring to Mr. Dalby as an 
infallible arbiter, and assisting in divers ways in our several grounds, 

I was his constant companion. And eventually, in the direction of 


134 


JANE JANSEN. 


gardening, I went even farther than he, but not without his hearty 
cooperation. This was in erecting a greenhouse for the cultivation 
of early vegetables for the table of my mountain inn, and in making 
a large mushroom bed in a little used cellar of the big stone house. 

At the same time, while we were making the vegetable world as 
subservient as possible to us on the mountain, we were engaged, at 
greater expense and consequently with greater care and considera- 
tion, in making the animal world minister to our immediate wants 
and yield a certain revenue for future contingencies. In this we 
were guided by Mr. Mooney, and soon met with a most grati- 
fying success. At the end of this period of my life of which I 
am writing now, I was the happy possessor of a beautiful thor- 
oughbred Kentucky mare, Lady Lexington, and two of her 
fillies, Bessie and Fannie, a herd of seven Jersey cows which sup- 
plied the inn abundantly with the richest cream and butter, a score 
of Jersey heifers, a fold of Shropshire ew T es, a pen of Cheshire 
swine, a hutch of lop-eared rabbits, a kennel of rough -coated collies, 
and a family of Persian cats; also, a yard of white Langshan fowls, 
a coop of Lady Amherst pheasants, a loft of Jacobin pigeons, and 
flocks at large of the European swan, the great bronze turkey, the 
black-shouldered peafowl, the white chinch u goose, and the Peking 
duck — all commanding the highest price for full-blooded stock and 
fancy fowls ; and in addition a large pond and the stream above it 
stocked with the native brook trout, a smaller, enclosed with wire 
netting, filled with snappers from the valley streams, and thirty col- 
onies of leather-back and five-banded Golden Italian bees. 

In the management of this great variety of vertebrate and inverte- 
brate stock, the labor was distributed among my dependents under 
the supervision of a triumvirate comprising Mr. Mooney, Dr. Ben- 
ham, and myself — Mr. Mooney, attending especially to the mating 
of the mammals and birds to preserve their purity and vigor, Dr. 
Benham, (in whose name the business was advertised in the live- 
stock and poultry journals,) the boxing and shipping, while I car- 
ried on the correspondence, kept the books, and, with infinite satis- 
faction, every six weeks or so deposited to my credit in the village 
bank the excess of receipts over expenditures. I also personally as- 
sisted Yoko, who manifested a special aptitude in the management 
of the apiary; and when I appeared before Dr. Benham, with my 
veiled hat on my head and patent smoker in my hand, I was ad- 
dressed invariably as the crowned and sceptered Queen-bee of Appa- 
lachia — a title which I took good care to assume at once and threat- 
en drones with annihilation. 

During this busy, successful, and happy period of my life, too, to 


JANE JANSEN. 


135 


meet the demands of an increasing custom of the Heart of Appa- 
lachia as a summer resort, I found time and money enough to add 
a third story to the big stone house, to enlarge the bam, to build an 
ice-house near the fish-pond, and enlarge and beautify the grounds 
around the several buildings. The last was comparatively inexpen- 
sive, but it made the greatest of all the improvements to the eye. 
Five-foot lengths of huge hollow chestnut-tree trunks were procured, 
hooped with wire, and set up at artistic points to simulate natural 
vases, their cavities filled with forest soil, and set with ferns and 
other suitable native plants. The Virginia creeper was trained over 
the several walls of the houses and barn ; and the gorgeous trumpet- 
creeper over the high barnyard gateway and about the log-cabins of 
Yalu and Congo. Vistas were cut through the surrounding under- 
growth, exposing here and there a moss-mantled cabin-boulder, a 
symmetric sugar-maple, a grove of hemlock, and the pearly lakelet 
of the fish-pond. Clumps of rhododendron .and other mountain 
shrubs were given suitable shapes. The inequalities of the inter- 
vening spaces were adjusted by cutting and filling, and grass seed 
sown. Rude bridges were erected over the brooks, and rustic 
benches placed in shady recesses along the several paths into the for- 
est and near the croquet grounds and tennis court. 

In all which I exercised to the fullest my sense of the artistic, de- 
signing on paper every alteration and addition before execution, and 
studying the effect of every detail in the general view\ Indeed, in 
every department of my diversified occupation, my eyes were per- 
haps as useful and effective as my hands. In distinguishing the 
characteristics of the different varieties of vegetable and animal 
stock on the farm, I was quick and infallible; and I took great de- 
light in putting them on paper and comparing my drawings with the 
standard types in the books to silence my coadjutors who affected to 
doubt to have an opportunity to approve and admire. The decided 
bent of my being, however, was to give expression to my recognition 
of every shape and form I observed in an artistic reproduction on 
paper or canvas ; and as I expanded from day to day, this dominant 
faculty became more and more the essential characteristic of my in- 
dividuality among my acquaintances and friends, and mine hostess 
of the Heart of Appalachia, the fruit grower, the stock-dealer, the 
queen-bee, and divers minor facets of my many-sided life were all 
merged and lost sight of in the Artist. 

My art was not without a money value, too, in my diversified vo- 
cation ; for having prepared a catalogue of the variety of stock 
owned by Dr. Benham and myself, embellished profusely with 
drawings from life, it was, when photo-engraved and printed by Dr. 


136 


JANE JANSEN. 


Benbam as his share of the expense, the means of effecting many 
sales for our mutual benefit as the correspondence of purchasers 
evinced. 


XXIII. 

During these four years, I was daily in the company of Dr. Ben- 
ham, excepting the winter months of the first year when he was at- 
tending his final course of lectures in the Georgetown Medical Col- 
lege, as I have said, and an occasional fortnight spent with his father 
and mother in Baltimore ; and I regarded him as a companion in 
everything I did. 

We read and studied together; we played and worked together ; 
and we shared our several joys and successes which so far outnum- 
bered and outweighed our sorrows and reverses as to obliterate them 
entirely. Betimes afoot we climbed the mountain sides and pene- 
trated the fastnesses of the forest for miles around, or on horseback gal- 
loped to and from the surrounding villages on the slightest pretexts, 
to mail a letter, to buy a paper of pins, or the like ; and as regularly 
as the autumn came with its agricultural expositions, we visited to- 
gether the fairs of our own and surrounding counties to mingle gen- 
erally with the masses in their common jostling, jesting, and sight- 
seeing, to meet and greet old acquaintances and friends, and es- 
pecially to inspect the stock exhibited and purchase such as we de- 
sired, and as well to distribute our catalogues among the exhibitors 
and effect a sale now and then. So we attended together the 
social picnics of the people of the valleys on each side, to the east 
and west of us, the great political conventions in the neighboring 
towns, the teachers’ institutes, and several balls and notable plays 
by actors of repute in the several county seats. In fine, we were 
associated as intimately and agreeably as we were constantly — in 
fact, in our persons, and in fancy, in the minds of all our friends 
and acquaintances. We were mated for life, I heard in one form or 
another almost daily — so frequently that I accepted it with as little 
thought and feeling as I would have done a remark that some day I 
would die. 

At length, however, in the spring of 1888, when I was in my nine- 
teenth year, and as a woman perhaps as fully developed mentally 
and physically as Dr. Benham was in his twenty-fourth as a man, I 
was compelled to give the matter my serious consideration by the 
persistent pleading of Dr. Benham himself to name the happy day 


JANE JANSEN. 


137 


of our union as man and wife. 

At one time I said to him, “ Robley, we are too much alike to love 
each other as a man and woman should who hope to wed and live 
happily together. We. are equally able to support ourselves and our 
households alone, without the other’s assistance. We are naturally 
companions and may be friends through life in the fullest sense of 
the word. We engage in the same pursuits — read the same books, 
race, ride, and romp together from morning till night ; and yet while 
we are side by side we are independent of each other, as if w'e were 
two men of the same years and habits of mind and body, and not 
mutually dependent, or supplemental to each other to form a per- 
fect whole, as a man and woman who cleave together in love to 
afford each other the assistance necessary to enable them to live com- 
fortably and happily. Our marriage would be a partnership and not 
a union ; an indefinite extension of our present business and social 
relations with a risk of rupture which we avoid as we are. So, my 
best of friends — the kindest, cheeriest, and most companionable 
companion ever woman had in a man, say no more about changing 
the name of our partnership without altering its nature — at any 
rate, not till we get back from our gallop this beautiful evening to 
Rattlesnake Ridge. Come, here is Zambie, with our horses ; and 
see, I am in my saddle with a bound without so much or so little as 
an offer of assistance from my would-be cavalier.” 

And away we went, over the hills to our favorite turning point, 
chatting merrily when our horses came together about anything in 
the world of possibilities or probabilities save our marriage. 

At another time I said to him, “ Ordinarily, it is true, Robley, as 
you say, that when a young woman saves the life of a young man, 
she becomes his wife ; and since I had the good fortune, albeit at the 
inestimable price of the loss of Argos, to prolong your precious ex- 
istence, I have heard the remark so frequently that I have been 
forced to investigate its pretentions to truth and consider its conse- 
quences to all concerned in the present instance. And the conclus- 
ions I have come to as a social philosopher are these. Pay atten- 
tion, please. You have counted the eye-like spots in the semi- 
circular spread of the peacock’s plumes before ; and if you let my 
pet crow peck at the trinkets on your watch-chain without keeping 
an eye on him, you may lose the charm I gave you and which I have 
heard you say often you would part with only with — the rascal has 
it, as sure as his name is Muggins ; and away he flies ! and you will 
never see your talisman again until you have found the cavern 
of the night-plumaged thief in some hollow tree-top. No, no ; it is 

R 


138 


JANE JANSEN. 


too late now to lament ; so listen and hearken well to every word I 
say. When a woman risks her life to save a man from drowning, 
drunkenness, or cremation in a log-pile, if you will, she does so be- 
cause she is the woman-half of the species Man and sees in the de- 
struction of the man-half the extinction of herself and kind. She 
is impelled irresistibly by her feminine nature, nine hundred and 
ninety-nine parts of which when moved act independently of her 
will and annihilate for the time being the single part that is under 
her conscious control. She is then practically an irresponsible crea- 
ture, and immediately should have a committee of discreet matrons 
of years and experience, appointed by the Court of the county in 
which she resides, to take charge of her person and estate. For hav- 
ing had her feminine nature aroused once to this extreme, or suicidal 
point, by the extremity of the man, she is moved the more easily 
in that direction afterward by the real or assumed distress of the 
man whom she has saved ; as a person who falls in an epileptic fit 
under certain circumstances will have a recurrence of his convulsions 
under similar. Now, in conclusion, if you will prove to me beyond 
a reasonable doubt, first, that it was I indeed who saved your life, 
and not the deer that put you in jeopardy, or the dog that in his 
death excited Congo to search for me in the direction of the course 
he had come, or big-hearted and big-bodied Congo who extricated 
me and took the necessary charge of you in your precarious condi- 
tion, or a combination of the four of us, deer, dog, Congo, and my- 
self ; and second, that you are in similar circumstances of danger 
and distress, 4nd that you are not malingering as perhaps only a 
physician of four and twenty can — well, I might have another fit, of 
course ; but until you have satisfied me on these two scores, the ebb 
and flow of the tides are not more regular than my inhalation and 
exhalation — I thank thee, Dr. Benham, for teaching me these 
words ; the ticking of my grandfather’s clock on the staircase is not 
more uniform than the diastole and systole of my heart — I thank 
thee, Jew, again; and the summer skies of the sunny South Sea 
isles we read of are not more serene and suggestive of infinite and 
eternal happiness than that intangible and imponderable and at the 
same time very considerable part of me as a fully-developed woman 
— get out the tablets of your memory, Robley, and mark it down in 
never-to-be-forgotten red — my mind. Now, let us inspect our stock 
on the two farms and determine what is best to be done. Oh, for 
paper and pencil to fix forever that look compounding delight and 
disappointment, like a sniff combining the odors of attar of roses 
and castor oil ! But, never mind, I can reproduce it accurately from 
memory, when I fail to make you smile otherwise. No ; let us walk 


JANE JANSEN. 


139 


and climb the fences wherever we happen to come to them. Have 
you salt? No ; then wait while I run to the house and back — or, 
let us go together, if you will.” 

At a third time — or, perhaps, a thirtieth ; no matter — I said, “ No, 
Robley, no ! And that is the twentieth time, one more than the pro- 
verbial nineteen naysays of a maiden that go for naught; and 
accordingly, a positive, absolute, and all-involving negation, denial, 
and refusal of your solicitations, importunings, pleadings, argu- 
ments, or howsoever your acts and addresses to make me your wife 
may be designated. I do not love you, however much I esteem, ad- 
mire, and honor you, and prize your friendship and company as the 
greatest good fortune that could have come to me during the past 
four years. And that this is a fact you cannot dispute, I ask you in 
all confidence, have you ever detected the slightest symptom of love 
in me for you ? In writing to Tom, Dick, and Harry about Chesh- 
iresand Langshans, have I ever written unconsciously, Dear Robley? 
Have you ever seen or heard of me blushing at the mention of your 
name, or in the discussion of you and your present, past, or future ? 
Have you ever known me to mope and mumble in your presence ? 
or misunderstand you about trifles ? or beg your forgiveness about 
unintentional acts and remarks which you never observed ? or weep 
without knowing why and thank you for the comfort you alw T ays 
give me ? or fly up in a pet and call you cruel when you have been 
kind ? In fine, in the long course of our intimate association, have 
you known me to be other than I am at present — too hale and happy 
to suffer the pangs of love for a moment, however sweet. And by 
the same tokens, I believe you do not love me as you profess. Your 
appetite is too good. Your cheeks are too ruddy. Your pulse — 
yes, let me have your wrist : not your hand ; now, flex your hand a 
little, if you please — there — your pulse is too regular, strong, and 
resilient. Away! dissembler, and get dyspepsia or melancholia or 
something at least akin to love before you come into my presence 
again ! What ! you will not ? Then — Hark ! I hear Zambie hal- 
looing to Yoko that No. 19 is about to swarm. Come, and assist in 
hiving it : I will lend you my veil, and you can hold the smoker. 
You will not ? You will follow me through figurative fire and flood, 
but not through a real swarm of bees ! Ah ,me ! a maiden of eigh- 
teen summers and alone in the world ! how the breed of man has de- 
generated from the good old days we read of when love made an in- 
vincible hero of even the veriest varlet whose previous autopsy 
would have revealed both a white liver and a chicken heart ! What ! 
you have changed your mind and will take the veil ? Well, I will 
borrow Yoko’s ; and together we shall share the dangers and delights 


140 


JANE JANSEN. 


of housing comfortably a colony of leather-backs.” 

But Dr. Benham believed that I loved him in despite of my pro- 
testations to the contrary, and bore with my raillery, rhadamontade, 
and facetiousness as the usual preliminaries of a maiden before 
yielding with a yes. He based his belief on our intimacy during 
the past four years, and a difference in our dispositions which I 
would not admit and which made our company mutually agreeable 
— unified us, as he was wont to express it, by comparing us to the 
organs of vision in one’s head which however alike in general yet 
look at the same object from different points of view and compound 
the different impressions on the two retinas into one image in the 
mind. We were mated then, in his opinion and argument, as nat- 
urally as our eyes. 

But it is a long lane that has no turning. At length he affected to 
acquiesce in my desire to continue indefinitely in the future as we 
had been in the past, the nearest and dearest of friends, model 
brother and sister, but nothing more. “Well, well, Jane; have it 
your way, if you will. We shall live together and yet apart, like 
the celebrated lovers among the Economites, Jacob Henrici and Ger- 
trude Rapp — until you change your mind.” 


XXIV. 

And day after day came and went without a word from him on 
the subject of matrimony ; and he seemed to be so contented and 
happy from morning till night, cheerily engaged in this or that pur- 
suit, and chatting agreeably with every man, woman, and child that 
came in his way, that I began to note the fact curiously in my mind, 
then covertly wonder, and finally vaguely fear, without admitting it 
to myself, that he would never broach the subject again. Slowly 
and insensibly but surely I became anxious and ill at ease ; and lest 
he might detect my worry without any apparent cause, I avoided 
his company more and more, till at length I actually spent a whole 
day without seeing him, except through the blinds of my chamber 
window, when, after arranging divers matters about the barn — possi- 
bly to conceal his anxiety about my absence — he mounted his 
horse, and singing merrily rode away in the direction of Laugh- 
linstown. 

What — or whom is he going to see there ? I asked myself and 
answered, in surprising vacillation, It is nothing to me, and It is all 
the world. And seriously I began to ask myself, If I ever could 


JANE JANSEN. 


141 


love him ? then, If I did ? and finally, If I did not ? 

Strangely, too, to add to my mental bewilderment and incipient 
emotional disturbance, the form and features of Philemon Holland 
began to reappear in my visions as they did some time before and 
especially in the morning of the eventful day I was associated so 
strangely so intimately — so happily — and, perhaps, so opportunely 
with Robley Benham. I endeavored to blend the images of the 
two into one ; but the more I thought about compounding and con- 
founding them, the more distinct they became in my mind. I put 
my fancies on paper — I drew with the ease of writing my name the 
familiar features of Philemon ; then, I modified the lines into a like- 
ness of Robley. But I was not satisfied; and half unconsciously 
and half intentionally, I covered a sheet of paper with alternate pic- 
tures of the boy of my childhood’s dream and the man of my wom- 
anhood’s reality ; and on the approach of my dear aunt, I folded the 
sheet as if it were a finished letter, and blushed for shame when I 
realized a moment afterward that I was practicing deception on the 
good woman whose sole solicitude was for my welfare and in whom 
I could confide more safely than myself. 

“ Ah, you are busy, I see, my dear. I am sorry I disturbed you.” 

11 No, dear aunt, I am not busy — far from it ; for when I am busy, 
I am happy.” 

“ And you are not happy ? Why, what in the world has hap- 
pened ? ” 

I then revealed to my aunt fully and freely the dilemma I was in, 
between my prepossession for Philemon Holland, with increasing 
intensity from childhood albeit with nothing but imaginings to feed 
on, and my present, intimate, happy, and inevitably entangling re- 
lations with Robley Benham. 

My dear aunt evidently had foreseen for a long time that in the 
event of my attaining womanhood in the agreeable company of the 
latter, I would have more or less of a conflict in the arena of my 
heart between the opposing forces of the past and present, and had 
determined definitely what to do and say in the crisis ; for no sooner 
had I concluded, than she sat dow r n on the easiest chair in the 
chamber with so much composure and deliberation as to calm my 
agitation at once and render me more impressionable to what she 
had to say. 

And from the first word of her studied preliminary, to the effect 
of what I had heard from infancy but which I never comprehended 
fully or felt appreciably, that I was in mind and body to a remark- 
able degree a reproduction of my Grecian grandmother, to the last 
detail of the history of that unhappy woman which I had never 


142 


JANE JANSEN. 


heard before, I listened with a fascination that pervaded my being ; as 
if I felt my fate physically in her words as fully as I comprehended 
mentally their meaning. 

In conclusion, she said, “ Now, my dear child, you know your 
danger and may avoid it. It is within you and not without — an in- 
herited susceptibility to be affected more by the creatures of your 
fancy than those of the world of fact around you. The Philemon 
Holland whom you love is a fiction of your heart and head — a wish 
idealized and idolized — a self-conceived spectre, which if not laid 
now in the heyday of your health and vigor, from day to day here- 
after will rise in increasing opacity between you and happiness even 
in the heart of a perfect paradise and drag you down to an untimely 
and most miserable end. There are demons of destruction, and this 
beautiful vision of yours — this anthropomorphosed dream, endowed 
with all the graces, accomplishments, and virtues of man of which 
you can conceive, and accidentally denominated Philemon Holland, 
is to you the arch demon of all. But how, you may ask — how can 
you escape this demon that has been born and bred in your very be- 
ing ? I will tell you, my child. Look outward, not inward. See 
the real around you, not the ideal within. See the good man at your 
side with whom you are associated daily and separate him at once 
and forever as a substance of good in the glare of the sunshine of 
to-day from the shadow of evil that pursues you in the increasing 
gloom of the past. Regard his person — is he not handsome in form 
and feature ? his health and vigor — is he not the equal and proba- 
ble superior in strength and agility of any of our mountain athletes ? 
his habits and morals — are they not excellent, as evidenced in his 
daily life in an infinite variety of circumstances? his inherited ten- 
dencies — are they not to be trusted, from your knowledge of his most 
estimable father and mother ? Consider too, in the light of day, the 
objective evidences around you of his intelligent, far-reaching, and 
agreeable devotion to you during the past four years — has he not 
had your welfare at heart in the past in such a way that you can 
rely upon him without the slightest tremor of fear in the future? 
You cannot but answer these several questions in the affirmative ; 
then, at once and forever, by the decree of your will, divorce your 
womanhood from the demon to whom you sold your susceptible 
childhood for the price of a beautiful dog, and marry the man with 
whom you have been associated intimately and happily for the past 
four years, and who now asks you to become his wedded wife. One 
word more. Avoid seclusion. Keep in the company of some one 
who is agreeable to you as long as you are in this troubled state — 
Robley himself, I do not hesitate to suggest. Your demon is not an 


JANE JANSEN. 


143 


exception — he will suck }mur heart’s blood only when you are 
alone.” 


XXV. 

My dear aunt’s discourse had the very opposite effect on me of 
that intended. She understood my nature better perhaps than any- 
body else could, from her knowledge of my inheritance from my 
mother and grandmother as evidenced in me in a thousand ways 
from infancy ; but she did not appreciate fully the impression made 
upon me by Philemon Holland under the circumstances which I 
have related. He was a reality and his surroundings were substan- 
tial as far as I was concerned when a child ; while to my dear aunt, 
who had never seen him or anybody connected with him, or any- 
thing belonging to him except the dog Argos, he was a name, a 
myth, a creature of the fancy, and nothing more. 

In fine, when my aunt ceased to speak and went down stairs to 
resume her household duties, I was apparently calm but in reality 
in a stupor compounding amazement, despair, and horror. 

The first chapters of the story of my grandmother’s life seemed to 
me to be but a variation of my own. She saw ; she loved : so did I. 
The one whom she loved passed from before her eyeballs, but the 
image of his personality remained behind, stamped ineffaceably on 
the coin of her being. And, accordingly, would not her unhappy 
fate he mine — whithersoever I might go and whomsoever I might 
wed to mitigate my misery, albeit he might be Robley Benham, as 
unexceptionable a man in every way as my worthy Scottish grand- 
father, Alexander Graham ? Was I not doomed already ! 

Then to have the cherished image of my beloved metamorphosed 
into a demon of destruction was horrible in the extreme. I shrank 
from the conversion as I would from the most foul and forbidding 
fiend I could conjure up in my excited imagination. Oh, no, it can- 
not be ! The beautiful face I see and the gently thrilling voice I 
hear, are not the belongings of a haunting werewolf with fearful 
jaws and horrifying howlings! Never! never! the presence that 
pervades my being in dreams like the fragrance of the trailing ar- 
butus in the early spring, is not that of a vampire crouched on my 
breast, fanning me gently with his bat-like wings of filmy loath- 
someness, while he greedily and gloatingly battens on my heart’s 
blood ! How could my dear, dear aunt ever fancy such a mutation 
of the beautiful, exalting, ennobling, and purifying, into the mon- 


144 


JANE JANSEN. 


strous and debasing in the extreme! How could her life of Jove ever 
give expression to such a sentiment of mockery unto itself! Is con- 
stancy to an absent lover or friend to be condemned? Is faithfulness 
a fault of our being? Is memory an organic curse? Are ideals of 
beauty, truth, and love, and images of those whom we cherish 
simply idols set up and worshiped in objective attestation of our 
innate savagery and brutality ? I cannot believe it — I will not ! 
Come what may come, I will uphold the image of Philemon Hol- 
land in my ardent gaze as a symbol of salvation, and never! never! 
of destruction ! 

With this determination, I rose to my feet; and having expanded 
my lungs to their full capacity, I walked across the room defiantly 
— the inside world in which I lived a life of the purest bliss with 
my ideal lover against the outside world in which I encountered 
mockery and misery — woe upon woe to an untimely end, as had 
been the fate of my grandmother and mother before me, and as cer- 
tainly would be mine. After a turn or two in the room, however, 
my step became slower and weaker, till wearily I resumed my chair ; 
for as I paced the floor, I began to think that I was laboring under a 
delusion in my servility to the image of Philemon Holland, and that 
if I was not then in the incipient stages of insanity, I would be soon 
if I permitted it any longer to subordinate my existence, by with- 
drawing me from the world around me — blunting my recognition of 
my relations with realities and confounding finally and forever my 
faculty of discerning any difference between the objective thing 
without and the subjective thought within. Seized with a vague 
alarm, then, I said to myself, My dear aunt is calm while I am dis- 
turbed ; and she is disinterested while I am involved — she is repos- 
ing on the river bank while I am struggling in the stream. She 
must be right and I wrong ; she sane, and I mad. She loves me 
with the tenderest, the truest, and the most unselfish love ever foster- 
mother in an aunt had for an only child. I must trust her and be- 
lieve that she advises me for the best. I must go out and seek the 
company of some agreeable person to absolve me from my secret 
self and release me from the baleful powers of the foul and forbid- 
ding fiend that pursues me in the disguise of a fancy-formed Phile- 
mon Holland. I must go and look out and see this man and that 
man — and reach out and take this man by the hand and that man 
by the hand, until, seeing and feeling sensuous and substantial 
men in the world in which the sun of to-day is shining, I may 
find some one who happily will melt and mint again my being 
and give it currency among the coins of a happy humanity, stamped 
with another image than that it now bears— Robley Benham’s? 


JANE JANSEN. 


145 


Perhaps ; I cannot say. 

Again I paced the room with the strength of a determination ; 
and again I sank into my chair in the weakness of indecision, as 
1 said to myself, Why Robley Benham’s rather than any other 
man’s. There is no good and sufficient reason beyond our intimate 
association and his agreeable and unexceptionable personality to me. 
I am under no obligation to love or marry him. I have never 
accepted anything from him except on the basis of business and a 
fair exchange of the benefits of friendship : keeping accurately bal- 
anced books in the one and capping in kind every kindness, cour- 
tesy and consideration not only to my little or single self, confined 
within the circle of my waist-band, but also to my considerably 
bigger or multiple self, comprising my dear aunt, and our dependent 
families of Congo and Yalu. I have helped him and he has helped 
me. I have made money for him and he has made money for me. 
I have enjoyed his company and he has enjoyed mine. We met as 
equals, woman and man ; and we have lived together for four years 
as equals ; and should we part to-day forever, the one going east and 
the other going west, we should bear equal burdens of benefits aris- 
ing from our happy association, and owe each other nothing save a 
natural outgrowth from this association of mutual regard and es- 
teem. But instead of parting, he comes forward manfully and ex- 
tends to me his hand with his heart in it ; and what shall I do ? 
what can I do? Alas ! my heart is not in my hand to give at will, 
and I must halt until it be, before I extend it to him in the high- 
way of honor. Then, oh, then, the spectre of my childhood will be 
laid and I shall have perfect peace and happiness. To-morrow I 
will spend the livelong day with Robley — here, there, anywhere — 
and foster every feeling that may be a weakened in the direction of 
the end in view. 


XXVI. 

The following three days from morning till night I spent in the 
company of Robley. I permitted myself to be as passive as possi- 
ble — following rather than preceding in our diverse undertakings 
and doings among our mammals and birds and in traversing the two 
contiguous tracts of land, and listening rather than talking. 

Robley was in the best of spirits, glowing with health and fervid 
with hope ; and taking my dear aunt’s advice literally, I looked at 

S 


146 


JANE JANSEN. 


him at every opportunity and dwelt in admiration on his beauty 
and grace not only from the point of view of an artist but also from 
that of a young woman who in the course of her business as an inn- 
keeper had observed and studied critically every young man who 
came into the circle of her vision. I set myself purposely to divine 
the motives of his actions ; and, to my great delight, I concluded 
that his exterior was an absolute exhibit of his ihterior — his move- 
ments so responsive to external relations — his replies so ready and 
direct to all my remarks — as to preclude the possibility of his 
giving in them an expression to any concealed intent or hidden de- 
sire at variance with that which was visible to the world in the 
glare of the sun. 

When we parted at nightfall the first evening, he said to me, with 
a facetiousness that could have come only from the encouragement 
he had received from my manner, “ Jane, as your physician and 
friend, I feel it imperatively incumbent on me to warn you against 
the invasion of an insidious affection of profound gravity, the first 
symptoms of which I have discerned in you to-day, in an unusual 
absent-mindedness, a remarkable indifference to the details of your 
work, and an occasional sigh. Let your thoughts and dreams to- 
night run in another channel than that in which they have coursed 
to-day, or to-morrow you will require more heroic treatment than 
words.” 

When we parted the second evening, he continued in the same 
vein of pleasantry, “ Ja 4 ne, dear Jane, although I am a physician of 
exceedingly limited experience in cases similar to yours, I am satis- 
fied from the symptoms which I have observed to-day in a general 
pallor relieved occasionally by a perceptible flush, in a passive ac- 
ceptance betimes of a helping hand, as in crossing the slippy log 
bridge below the Cobweb Falls and in clambering over the rocks be- 
yond, and in a partial loss of your faculty of appreciating the lapse 
of time and the immensity of space, that you have been invaded by 
the dread affection of which I spoke last night — in fact, that your 
system now is pervaded by its virus. Accordingly, you must follow 
the directions of your physician implicitly, if you have life enough 
to enable you to aid the disease in happily running its course. The 
first medicine which I shall prescribe for you is called Elixir vitae. 
It has been compounded secundem artem and may be taken ad libitum 
pro re nata — or freely, whenever the opportunity occurs. I have it 
here in a portable form on my lips. Permit me, Jane, to adminis- 
ter it.” 

I turned away and ran upstairs. 

“ Well, well,” I heard him say as I retreated from his proffered 


JANE JANSEN. 


147 


kiss, “ it is the function of a physician to prescribe for the best in 
accordance with the circumstances; and if his pills and potions be 
thrown out of the window, he should not be blamed for his patient’s 
suffering.” 

The third day over, as we sat together in a favorite retreat in the 
gathering gloom of evening, and Robley had concluded a most af- 
fecting appeal to me to accept his love, I was moved by an irresisti- 
ble impulse to refuse in the most positive manner to consider any 
longer his proposition. I said to him, “ Robley, prudence, duty, and 
honor compel me to close my ears to you as a lover. In listening to 
you, I may seem to be pleased when in fact I am not ; and I must 
not be put in a false and compromising position. In so doing, also, 
I may jeopard the happy relations of ourselves and families, which 
it is incumbent on me to perpetuate by every means in my power. 
And finally, I am convinced from a study of myself during the past 
three days and nights of mental and emotional excitement, that I 
do not love you now, and, in all probability, never can. To this you 
may say, as you have already, that whether or not I love you in my 
sense of the word, you are satisfied, from our association during the 
past four years, that I love you in yours, and will marry me in ab- 
solute confidence that our future will be certainly as happy as our 
past, and in all probability as happy as ever falls to the lot of man 
and wife. That may be, but I doubt it; and I give myself the 
benefit of the doubt. I cannot lie; and I will not say at the altar 
that I love you when I do not. The falsehood and hypocrisy, 
known perhaps only to myself, would make me wretched to the 
end of my days and most deservedly, and involve you neces- 
sarily in my misery. No, Robley ; I am too true a friend to 
you to cause you knowingly an instant’s suffering. So, I im- 
plore you, by our happy relations now, which I know you 
prize as highly as I do — I implore you to receive this refusal of 
your suit, which has stirred me to the profoundest depths of 
my being, as final.” 

The grand man endeavored to conceal the pangs of a rejected 
lover; for he was too honorable to reveal his suffering to excite 
my pity or affect me through sympathy. He was not able, how- 
ever, to prevent an appreciable hesitation in his manner and 
stifle a certain huskiness in his voice, when he said, after a few 
moments’ silence, “ To-morrow, Jane, we shall go about our work 
as usual. Come, take my arm, and let me conduct you to your 
aunt. Good night.” 


148 


JANE JANSEN. 


XXVII. 

The crisis was past. The agony was over. I breathed freely ; and 
as I hastened up the stairs, I observed that my step had regained its 
elasticity ; and when I encountered my dear aunt in my chamber, I 
threw my arms about her neck ; and having kissed her affectionately, 
I told her freely and a little cheerily perhaps all that had transpired 
in the last three days in consequence of my following her advice. 
r u And aunty, dear, I have come to the conclusion,” I appended to 
my narration, in a surprisingly confident tone so soon after my 
troubled and distressful, “ that the mistake my grandmother made 
was, not in treasuring to the day of her death the memory of the 
man whom she loved, but in marrying my grandfather. We never 
might have come into existence in that event, perhaps ; but some- 
thing might have happened had she remained single by which she 
could have married the English officer and lived to a good old age, 
the happiest woman in the world. At any rate, come weal or woe, I 
will treasure the image of Philemon Holland until I shall have 
learned for a certainty of his death ; and I will never marry another 
then, until I shall have forgotten Phil, and may be able then to love 
my husband with my whole heart and being, rendered all the more 
worthy of a good man’s affection by my constancy and silent suffer- 
ing for years. So, wish me a happy dream of Phil, aunty dear, and 
kiss me good night.” 


XXVIII. 

I slept well — too soundly to dream ; and the next morning, I 
arose early, refreshed, and donned my clothes, alternately singing a 
merry song and mimicking the chattering and scolding of a familiar 
red-squirrel on a limb projecting toward my window, running to and 
fro and flirting his tail at every turn with a comical air of saucy de- 
fiance. 

At breakfast I greeted Robley in a cheery mood ; and Zambie 
having reported the sight in the early morning of several deer in 
the neighborhood of the graves of Argos and the mother of my 
pets, (now running at large and practically as wild as their associ- 
ates to everybody but myself,) I set out alone to give them salt and 
keep them accustomed to my person and voice as much as possible, 
if I found mine among them. 


JANE JANSEN. 


149 


Long since the rude effigies of Yoko’s manufacture had lost all sem- 
blance to the animals intended, by the falling out of the pins which 
represented their tails, necks, and ears, leaving the bodies supported 
on their rickety legs ; and these, at my suggestion, were hollowed by 
Yoko on the upper surface and converted into shallow salting- 
troughs to entice my pets, when they began to run at will, to return 
betimes to the grave of their mother and receive my caresses. 

I soon saw the deer — five in number — near the troughs, and fan- 
cied I recognized an old buck among them as one of my pets and a 
young buck as one of the offspring of the other, a doe, of the preced- 
ing year the latter buck an especial favorite on account of his excep- 
tional confidence in me, taking salt from my hand, and permitting 
me to scratch his head and put my arms around his neck when the 
others scarcely would suffer me to come within twenty, thirty, or 
sometimes even a hundred yards of them. 

On this occasion the herd was unusually timid and shy ; and re- 
treating before me farther and farther from the inn, I found myself 
at length by the side of the log where I stood, four years before to 
the very day and at approximately the same time in the morning, 
when I saw the living link Argos that connected me with Philemon 
Holland pass out of sight forever in pursuit of the deer, and when, 
a few moments later, I became associated with Robley Benham 
seemingly never to be separated save by death. 

In remarking mentally the coincidence of the date and time of 
day, I sat down on the log ; and forgetting the deer, I sat perhaps as 
motionless as a statue as I reviewed all that had taken place during 
the past four years, and especially the culminating period which had 
come to an end the past night. 

An end ? I asked myself in ’spite of myself. 

But the doubt was of short duration. 

An end. The very agony I have suffered in rejecting Robley is of 
itself enough to convince me that I love Philemon Holland with my 
whole heart, and that I cannot love another as long as there is the 
slightest hope of our meeting again. 

The tongue of my favorite deer upon my hand, which contained a 
lump of salt, awoke me from my reverie. Emboldened by my im- 
mobility and silence, he had come stealthily to my side and was un- 
der the influence of his early subjection to me before either of us 
was aware of it. 

“ Ah, Billy, you rogue, to run away from me and pretend you do 
not love me,” I said to him, as I gave him the salt with one hand 
and patted his head and stroked his neck affectionately with the 
other. “ Then to lead me so far away from home — hither and 


150 


JANE JANSEN. 


thither through field and forest for hours — until you have 
brought me to this most significant spot to both of us, where so 
much of our several lives has been determined. What motive had 
you in your roguish heart ? What trick to play on me ? or trap to 
catch me in? and leave me ever after half convinced you are an 
accomplice of Fate ? ” with a scarcely coherent chatter besides in- 
tended to convey my affection for the beautiful animal rather than 
the rambling of my self-considering thoughts. 

Suddenly the deer sprang from my side in alarm ; and looking up, 
I saw a stranger on the road — perhaps twenty feet from me — in a re- 
spectful attitude, with his hat uplifted, as if he awaited the termina- 
tion of my interview with the deer to address me. 

He was tall and spare — or, to be more exact in his portraiture — he 
was stooped somewhat, but nevertheless noticeably above the aver- 
age of men in height, and gaunt to a degree approaching raw- 
boned ; while his face was pale and of the type significantly called 
hatchet : his features strongly marked : the ridge above his keen 
grey eyes prominent to an extreme degree, his nose, though shapely, 
remarkably large, and his mouth and chin disproportionately small : 
the expression of the whole being rather repelling than attractive. 

He was dressed from top to toe in an English outing suit ; and he 
carried a tourist’s bag, loosely slung over his left shoulder. 

His age was doubtful from his stoop and pallor — from twenty-five 
to thirty-five or even forty ; and while he was not a handsome man 
from an artistic point of view, he was in his totality a striking and 
impressive personage. 

The first thought that came to me when I saw him was — A big 
raw-boned American student of some sort in an English outfit ; but 
on hearing him utter his first sentence, I set him down, from the 
tone of his voice and the accent and rhythm of his speech, as an 
out-and-out Englishman by birth and breeding. 

“ I hope you will pardon me for driving away unintentionally your 
beautiful pet; and if a stranger may be permitted to address you in 
the way of making an enquiry, I beg you will inform me if you can 
where I can find a certain Dr. Robley Benham. He is engaged in 
breeding thoroughbred stock ; and as I have been informed, he re- 
sides in this neighborhood.” 

“ The land on the opposite side of the road belongs to him ; but 
he resides in the inn, the Heart of Appalachia, on this side of the 
highway, nearly a mile distant in the direction you are traveling,” I 
replied ; adding in the same breath, with the freedom of one accus- 
tomed to converse with strangers, “ I am going thither myself; and 
if you will accept my company. I shall be happy to go with you 


JANE JANSEN. 


151 


and give you any further information you may desire.” 

“ I accept your proffered company and services with many 
thanks. Permit me, if you please.” 

He extended his hand to me to assist me in stepping over a little 
ditch by the roadside which otherwise I would not have observed at 
all, for it was but little larger than a wagon rut; and he did so so 
spontaneously and gracefully that I recognized the act as an expres- 
sion of a naturally courteous and well-bred man. 

What inconsiderable trifles affect us ! I took his hand, and step- 
ped over the ditch, indicating my appreciation of his kindness by 
magnifying the barely possible danger of stepping into it with a per- 
ceptible display of caution ; while I smiled at the absurdity of his 
assisting me, who, in racing along slippy logs, in clambering up and 
down rocky steeps, or in leaping over brooks, could get along per- 
haps with more safety than he. Robley, familiar with my indepen- 
dence of action in mountaineering, would have been as indifferent 
to my stepping over a ditch of many times the dimensions of this 
as to my walking along a smooth and level path at noonday. 

“ By chance I picked up a copy of Dr. Benham ’s catalogue in the 
reading room of a hotel in Harrisburg, and, having read it from cover 
to cover and dwelt in admiration over the artistic drawings from life 
with which it is embellished so liberally, I conceived a great de- 
sire to make his personal acquaintance. I imagine from the scope 
and character of his occupation, and the happy way in which he 
comes before the public, that he is a gentleman of rare ability, with 
a kindly nature that knows no bounds, and an innate love for nat- 
ural history, who, in early life having amassed a fortune, is, in the 
glorious autumn of his life, spending his money freely and his days 
happily in following his natural inclination. He has business abil- 
ity and habits certainly ; and only in the character which I 
have given him can I account for the sympathetic love he re- 
veals for his beasts and birds in his writing, and a certain corre- 
spondence between an expressed admiration in the text of their sev- 
eral exceptional beauties of form in motion and at rest and a per- 
fect delineation of the same in his artistic engravings. I humbly 
beg your pardon in advance, if I go too far or too wide of the mark 
in what I am about to say — but, from your outward appearance and 
the revelation of your inward nature in your occupation when I met 
you, I infer that you are a daughter of Dr. Benham ? ” 

“ Oh, no, no ; ” I replied, with a smile of amazement and amuse- 
ment on my face which I could not repress at the divergence so 
glaringly apparent to me between the facts and the stranger’s fancies 
and inferences. u Dr. Benham is a young man — now in his twenty- 


152 


JANE JANSEN. 


fourth year.” 

“ Then certainly a brother of yours, with most exceptional abili- 
ties and accomplishments and decided habits of life in one so 
young.” 

“ No ; neither father nor brother, but a friend whom I am proud 
to acknowledge when it is proper for me to do so in public and pri- 
vate ; for he is a gentleman of so many excellent qualities that any 
young woman, I believe, from my intimate knowledge of and associ- 
ation with him for several years, might be proud and as happy as 
proud to call her friend.” 

k ‘ Neither father nor brother, but intimate friend and associate. 
Then I have but one more inference. You are the woman half of 
the catalogue which fascinated me — yours the kindly sympathy to all 
living things which I conceived to be possible in a man only after 
he has passed in ease and affluence the destructive or meridian per- 
iod of a man’s life ; and yours the artistic excellence revealed on 
every page. Oh, happy the Heart of Appalachia indeed when in it 
a young man and woman, on the very threshold of active and useful 
life, may unite in accomplishing the great good to themselves and 
the great world around them which this, their joint production in 
the form of a catalogue, reveals ! ” 

At this unexpected outburst of appreciation of my literary and 
artistic accomplishments and the benefits accruing particularly and 
generally from my intimate and agreeable association with my 
friend of so many and so fully acknowledged excellences, I was 
moved to tears and trembling ; the thought flashing through my 
brain and inflaming my feeling, that thus far and happily I have 
gone with Robley, but never a step farther until the ghost of the 
past, now assuming the terrors of my dear aunt’s demon of destruc- 
tion, shall have been laid and forever. 

Through my moistened eyes I looked up cautiously at the stran- 
ger and scrutinized his face and expression more carefully than I 
had before, to divine more accurately if possible who he was 
that so surprisingly could affect me by the powers of his mind while 
I was indifferent to his person and even repelled by the stern expres- 
sion of his pale and hatchet-like face. Happily, at the time, he was 
looking at the inn which was coming into sight, and I got a good 
view of his striking profile without betraying my curiosity ; but the 
outlined form I beheld was as blank and impenetrable within as a 
silhouette. 

“ And that is the inn where you have resided for several years 
with your worthy friend and assisted him in his labors with your 
sympathy and skill— the Heart of Appalachia, most happily nam- 


JANE JANSEN. 


153 


ed. Ihe innkeeper doubtless is a widower of many years, with the 
romance of youth still lingering in his heart— the house and its 
surroundings the visible shadow and the name the audible echo of 
his happiness. How resigned to his fate he must be, and even 
cheery in his loneliness, unless it be happily that he has in his sight 
the living likeness of the dead — Are you not the innkeeper’s onlv 
daughter and the image of your departed mother?” 

“ I am the innkeeper myself, and have been from childhood, 
when, left an orphan with an affectionate but unbusiness-like aunt 
and a number of dependents, I was compelled by necessity to do 
what I could to relieve our growing wants. Happily I conceived 
the idea of converting the old homestead into an inn, in which we 
all found work to suit us severally, and together made a gratifying 
and satisfying success of the business ; and as happily, perhaps, in 
the open-heartedness of childhood, I called the inn the Heart of 
Appalachia, which not only expresses its situation on the summit of 
one of the western ridges of the Appalachian or Alleghany Mount- 
ains, but hints at that which is near and dear to humanity in gen- 
eral and makes the name agreeable and memorable to all — an adver- 
tisement not painted on fences or paraded in newspapers, but carried 
about in one’s secret self whithersoever he may wander.” 

“ From all which I may conclude that I have been mistaken in 
another of my inferences. It is your business ability, as much pos- 
sibly as that of your most excellent friend, which I have remarked 
in the catalogue which bears his name alone. You are the silent 
partner of the worthy doctor in this important vocation of perfect- 
ing and perpetuating the most useful and ornamental of the many 
varieties of domesticated animals ; and I shall be proud indeed, if, 
from the knowledge I have acquired in several departments of zool- 
ogy and botany in the most advanced perhaps of the scientific 
schools of England, I shall prove worthy of enrollment among the 
coadjutors and friends of your associate and yourself. This herd of 
Jerseys on our right and this flock of Shropshires on our left are 
yours, I presume ; while those we passed soon after we met, belong 
to Dr. Benham— yes? I thought so ; and I may say in conclusion, 
with perfect propriety, I trust, in the expression of my appreciation 
of the marvelous success you have achieved in early life, not one 
woman in a million, under the circumstances, would have had your 
prudence as a girl and your tact as a person in business in keeping 
your several interests apart while you kept your persons. Happy 
the man who cannot succeed in life through his own efforts and yet 
finds favor in your eyes ; for he will get wealth with his wife in 

T 


154 


JANE JANSEN. 


any quarter of the world.” 

“ I thank you for the good opinion you have formed of me, and 
sincerely hope I am deserving of it. Howsoever, I am induced by 
your freedom of fancy and speech with respect to myself and my 
affairs, to express my surprise at your incomprehensible powers to 
me of apprehension and inference by which you have met a young 
woman whom you have never seen or heard of before, and in a con- 
versation of a half hour’s duration in a zigzag way, like a ship tack- 
ing at sea, not only have learned all about me that a stranger w r ould 
wish to know, but also revealed me to myself as a woman in the 
world I never dreamed of before.” 

“ Do not wonder at that. It is the stranger that acquaints a 
man with his own hearthstone ; and it is through the eyes of others 
the most opposed to us in every way that we see ourselves aright 
in the clearest light. The mirror might do as well, were it not that 
it sees us from our own point of view and is mute ; and we inter- 
pret our own reflections as we please, with little likelihood of doing 
so either correctly or comprehensively. But who — who is this? Not 
a Chinese, perhaps ; but one who has been born not a stone’s 
throw from the Middle Kingdom, I am sure.” 

“ This is Yalu, a native of Chosen or Korea, and one of the best 
of workers and most faithful servants in the world. The woman in 
the doorway of the cabin on our right is Cora, his wife, and a native 
also of the Mysterious Peninsula of the Far East. They have a 
family of four children living here, the eldest Yoko — there the good 
fellow is in the apiary as usual at this season of the year hiving a 
swarm or assisting in the economic labors of the divers colonies. 
You will find him an agreeable and intelligent companion in hunt- 
ing, fishing, roaming through the forest, or in inspecting the stock 
of his mistress.” 

“ Well, this is strange, indeed ! A family of perhaps the most ex- 
clusive people of the world transplanted from Asia to America and 
multiplying and thriving here in the mountain wilds of Pennsyl- 
vania as well perhaps as they would — nay, a hundred fold better 
than on the mountain flanks of Gensan. You, mine marvelous hos- 
tess of the Heart of Appalachia, are familiar with these rarely seen 
Asiatics beyond the boundaries of their own country and realize 
nothing remarkable in their being here; but I cannot look upon 
them without wondering and giving expression to my wonderment. 
How in the world have you imported them ? ” 

“ That is a long story to tell, and at another time, if it be your 
pleasure to listen, I will recount it. But if you are amazed at the 
transplanting of Yalu here from the eastern shores of Asia, how wdll 


JANE JANSEN. 


155 


you be affected by — Congo ! Congo ! — this importation from an un- 
known part of the vast interior of Africa ? ” 

We had come to the porch when I called ; and scarcely had the 
sound of my voice died away than the gigantic form of the negro 
appeared in the doorway, a long white apron and a high white 
cap increasing his apparent altitude and the blackness of his skin, 
while a grin of pleasure at being called to be admired circled 
around his glossy face and disturbed to a certain extent an inspec- 
tion of the scars with which his cheeks, and the string of warts with 
which his forehead and nose, were adorned. 

The stranger, taking off his hat as if in reverence of the majestic 
savage before him, examined him carefully from head to foot and es- 
pecially the mutilations of his face in incontrovertible attestation of 
his birth and bringing up to manhood in the wilds of the Ebon Con- 
tinent. 

At length, the stranger, turning to me, said, “ I have nothing to say 
until I shall have seen all. I have only a limited stock of words of 
wonder and I must not exhaust my vocabulary until I shall be sure 
of the end. With your permission, however, I will offer my hand 
to this grandest specimen of his race I have ever seen, in earnest of 
my desire that thereafter we shall be the best of friends.” 

I nodded assent with a smile, and the stranger took the hand of 
the giant who was delighted greatly at the consideration shown him. 

We entered the hall; and here receiving a note from Congo which 
I recognized at a glance was from Robley, I turned to the stranger 
and said, “ Now, if you will excuse me, Congo will conduct you to 
your room — No. 7, Congo — and give you every necessary attention. 
Luncheon will be called at twelve — in a few minutes, as I see by the 
clock in the office ; when we shall meet again.” 

I then ascended the stairs ; tearing open the note and reading the 
contents as I went to my room — 

“ Dear Jane : — A few moments after you set out this morning to 
reclaim your pets, I received a telegram from home announcing 
the serious illness of my father and summoning me to his bedside. 
I have sent out all the children to call you in before I go; but lest 
they should miss you, I write this to you in lieu of taking you by 
the hand, and looking in your eyes, and saying to you good-bye, 
with a world of meaning in the words. Happily the messenger who 
brought the telegram came in a buggy, and I can return with him 
and catch the morning express. I leave the management of all my 
affairs in your hands while I am gone indefinitely. Hoping for the 
best before me and wishing for the best behind me, I am, 

Yours in haste, Robley.” 


156 


JANE JANSEN. 


I was sorry to hear of Robley’s absence for many reasons besides 
the disappointment of the stranger who had come especially to make 
his acquaintance ; which naturally came to my mind from the fact 
that I had left him but a moment before in the hall and heard him 
then at the heels of Congo going into No. 7. The elder Benham was 
a kind and indulgent father, and Robley loved him with a free and 
open-hearted affection which was very gratifying to the old gentle- 
man. He was, moreover, a warm friend of mine and an outspoken 
admirer. And — a little to my surprise, when I became conscious of 
my feelings and thoughts — I wished I was going with Robley to re- 
lieve both him and his father as much as lay in my power ; and 
sighing, said to myself, Oh, I know I could save them both many 
an hour of suffering and anxiety. 


XXIX. 

The bell for luncheon sounded. I went down stairs, and turned into 
the office to look at the register and get the name of the stranger 
that I might present him to the guests of the house, numbering eight 
or ten besides himself, including several summer boarders who were 
ladies and gentlemen of wealth and refinement and agreeable com- 
panions in their freedom from care and occupation. My eyes 
caught the last entry on the page at a glance ; and in an indescribable 
bewilderment of my sentient being, I read and re-read what had 
been written in the book in a hand so bold and plain I might have 
read it half the width of the office away, “ Philemon Holland, Pitts- 
burgh, Pa.” 

Fortunately there was no one besides myself in the room ; and I 
retained my consciousness of this fact while everything else was in 
such a confusion as practically to be forgotten. And when at length 
I felt that I might faint in the gathering gloom, I sat down on a 
chair, and laid my head on the open page of the book before me 
containing the fateful signature. In a few minutes, I was able to 
raise my head and read the written words again — as wholes and as 
groups of letters — forward and backward — backward and forward — 
till I was satisfied that I was not laboring under a delusion. Then, 
with regained strength and a partial realization at least of the sig- 
nificance of what I had read, I bounded out of the office and 
through the hall to the vestibule of the back stairs, where I ran 
against Arabella, carrying the dessert from the kitchen to the pantry, 
and tumbled her over on the floor — the tray, spoons, napkins, and 


JANE JANSEN. 


157 


saucers with their contents going in as many directions. Without 
stopping, however, to assist the astonished old servant to her feet 
and lament with her over the destruction of the dishes and the des- 
sert, I ascended the stairs and rushed into my chamber where I en- 
countered my dear aunt, who, about to descend to preside at the 
head of the table, was in her special dining-room trim, her hair as 
smooth as brush could make it, and her collar and cuffs in the per- 
fection of condition and disposition. Utterly disregarding her make- 
up, however, I caught her up in my arms ; and, in a frenzy of excite- 
ment and affection approaching an attack of hysteria, I hugged the 
dear woman, and kissed her mouth and cheeks and forehead and 
neck until she not only was rumpled from head to foot but put into 
a sympathetic frenzy at my unaccountable behavior which did not 
abate as soon as mine, and left her agitated in mind and body the 
remainder of the day. 

When my frenzy had decreased to a point when I could speak co- 
herently, I told my aunt that No. 7 was Philemon Holland ; that I 
had met him and walked with him and talked with him for half an 
hour, and that, strangest of all strange things that had ever hap- 
pened to me, I did not recognize him ; that he did not look at all 
like himself when a boy ; that he had been at school in England 
and wore English clothes and spoke with an English accent ; and 
that, while he was not handsome, he was a remarkably striking man 
of fine sensibility, generous sympathy, and rare powers of percep- 
tion, appreciation, and application, which impressed me from the 
moment I heard him come to a conclusion from his stated premises. 
“ Oh, aunty dear,” I concluded, “ I am so happy my head is almost 
turned ! And to think I was on the very brink of saying yes to 
Robley only last night ! What could I have done had I yielded to 
him, but die the most miserable of deaths with a broken heart, 
like my poor dear grandmother ! ” 

At length my aunt put a damper on my enthusiasm by inter- 
pellating, “ But, my dear child, you have not the slightest proof in 
the world, that this English-dressed and English-speaking Philemon 
Holland is your long-lost Philemon Holland ; while, in proof that 
he is not, you admit that the Englishman does not resemble or 
remind you in any way of your American boy. There are, perhaps, 
a thousand John Smiths in the state of Pennsylvania alone; and 
might there not be two Philemon Hollands in the whole of the 
United States and Great Britain ? I have heard you say, too, that 
the name is found in the biographic dictionaries of distinguished 
literary men. In other w’ords, it has been borne by another before 
the birth of your Philemon, and might be borne as well by a con- 


158 


JANE JANSEN. 


temporary. Restrain yourself, my dear, dear child. Think of the 
shock you would sustain should the stranger prove a stranger in- 
deed.” 

At this juncture, however, when I was beginning to be alarmed 
by the arguments of my aunt, I heard a peculiar knock at the door 
which I recognized as Congo’s, and bade him come in. 

The big-hearted negro entered, and, in a few words, in his peculiar 
way, which it is idle to attempt to imitate and which would require a 
page to describe, told us that the stranger was the person who when 
a boy had given Argos to me ; that when he entered No. 7, he began 
to inspect the pictures on the walls ; and, afterward, having come to 
the picture on the mantel which represented the dog and myself as 
a child at his side, surrounded with a fantasy of faces which exhib- 
ited the donor in every conceivable aspect, he recognized the dog 
and himself and recalled the fact that he had given him to a little 
girl who made pictures. He then asked Congo a hundred and one 
questions, What was my name? What had become of the dog? 
Who was Robley Benham ? How I came to be living on the moun- 
tain and an artist? How he came to be there? And Yalu? etc., etc., 
till Congo, realizing that he had made a discovery of incalculable 
import to me, excused himself for a moment and came to report the 
same to me. 

My aunt was convinced ; and my fears, which she had excited, 
were allayed at once. 


XXX. 

In the afternoon, I had an interview with Philemon Holland and 
learned the history of himself and family from the time we parted 
as children. 

“ A short time after your trip to Greenesburgh,” he said, “ my 
father removed with his family to Chicago to avail himself in the 
practice of his profession of the immensely larger field which the in- 
evitable metropolis of the New World presented, and give his child- 
ren all the advantages and opportunities which the great city afford- 
ed for their future welfare. But before he had secured an office in 
Chicago, he met with an apparently slight injury in a blockade of 
vehicles at a street crossing, and died from the effects of it before 
either his physician or any of his family suspected that he was hurt 
seriously. He left a comparatively large estate, wholly in bonds and 
stocks, for a country lawyer, but insufficient to maintain us in the 


JANE JANSEN. 


159 


style we all expected to live in in the fashionable part of the city — 
especially my mother, who from an early period of her childhood 
to her marriage, had lived in the most comfortable circumstances, 
and who, during her otherwise happy life with my father, had 
chafed with increasing irritability and impatience, in the contracted 
social circle of Greenesburgh. At this juncture, she was reclaimed 
by an only parent living, her father, from whom, by a mysterious 
accident — or, for aught anybody knows to the contrary, a chapter of 
accidents — she had been separated in infancy. He proved to be a 
temporary resident of Montreal, Canada, an Englishman by birth, of 
French Huguenot parentage, who having spent all his money in 
searching for his daughter in vain, went to the gold mines of Balla- 
rat, in the Australian colony of Victoria, and made a sufficient for- 
tune to enable him to continue the search without regard to expense 
to the end of his days. His name is Jules Jerome; and the only 
clue he had to the identity of my mother as his daughter was her 
maiden name, Mary Jay, as it appeared incidentally in a biographic 
sketch of my father which was published in the Inter-Ocean a few 
days after his death. This name, it appears, had been given my 
mother from two circumstances — first, the fact that the initials M. J. 
were found embroidered on the night-slip in which at midnight in 
the streets of the city of Marseilles she had been found by the po- 
lice ; and second, the correspondence of these with those of the natal 
name Mary Jay, of the good woman, Mrs. Nathanael St. Clair, of 
New York, into whose hands the foundling eventually fell to be 
treated as a daughter ever afterward, albeit not legally adopted. 
Howsoever slight the clue and inconclusive the proofs, limited to the 
sex and age of my mother and her being found in the country in 
which the Jerome child had been lost and not farther from the very 
town than Marseilles is from Nice, my mother and the old gentle- 
man, after they had met and considered all the circumstances, were 
satisfied they were daughter and father, and the children acquiesced, 
more or less readily, when they learned the old gentleman was as re- 
spectable as he seemed to be rich. I, perhaps, was the most reluc- 
tant to accept the stranger as a grandfather ; for the reason that he 
evinced a certain partiality for me which separated me from my 
brother and sisters, and, at the same time, in instituting physical 
comparisons between us which were disparaging to me, while he was 
utterly oblivious to my wounded feelings of pride and self-respect. 
A taller man than myself and I doubt not a handsomer, he was 
wont to place himself at my side, and say, ‘ Now, my boy, straighten 
up, throw back your chin, shoulders, and hips, and forward your 
chest, and see if you cannot come up a little closer to the standard 


160 


JANE JANSEN. 


of your stock. You are more like the Jeromes than any of your 
sisters or brother; and I dare say had you been born in any part 
of the world where men and women attain their full stature and ex- 
pansion, as in Old England, the region between the Rhine and the 
Baltic, the southeastern seaboard of Australia, or the Blue Grass re- 
gion of Kentucky, you would now be the alter ego of your distin- 
guished grandsire, in every particular save grace and good looks.’ 
After a little while, however, I began to regard the old gentleman 
with more consideration, attributing his preference for me to a real 
resemblance albeit in caricature between us which he saw and felt if 
I did not, and his bluntness of manner and speech, to the good feel- 
ing with which he was filled to overflowing, and the emotional joys 
incident to the sudden realization of his dearest hopes and most de- 
lightful dreams during a period of distress that almost doubled the 
term of my life. In the meantime, my mother — her legal advis- 
ers having been satisfied that our newly-found forebear was wealthy 
enough to meet the necessary expenses — accepted her father’s prop- 
osition to go with him to England and live in London, or elsewhere, 
as sbe might determine would be most agreeable to herself and ad- 
vantageous for her family. She chose London ; and there we have 
lived ever since in the enjoyment of comforts and pleasures as our 
several tastes might suggest and abundant means could procure. I 
have followed my natural inclination to study — to accumulate facts 
and associate them according to their several facets, philosophically, 
I might say, or scientifically, or curiously — without any definite end 
in view, unless it be after I shall have come to certain conclusions 
which I may deeln of value to others, to put them on paper in the 
best literary style I can acquire by study and practice and print 
them in the form of pamphlets or more pretentious books. During the 
past winter I came back to America alone, to get away from the libra- 
ries of London as far as possible, to visit my friends, and recruit my 
health by going whither the whim of the moment might lead me; 
and if I have a residence in the United States to-day it is in Pittsburgh, 
where I have rented a room indefinitely for the reception of myself 
and luggage. By the way, Miss Jansen, since you keep a most 
charmingly appointed inn here on the mountain, and I find the sur- 
roundings infinitely more agreeable than I was induced to expect 
even from the ostensible catalogue of Dr. Benham with its artistic 
and literary merits on every page, I would be pleased extremely to 
be permitted to retain, for a few days at least, the room which I 
occupy now ; in which case, I will send for a necessary part of my 
luggage, in order that I may appear in the parlor and dining-room 
in the presence of yourself and guests, in more becoming raiment 


JANE JANSEN. 


161 


than an English outing-suit.” 

I gave him permission, of course, and told him how Zambie could 
run at once with his message to the telegraph office in the village, 
and be with a wagon at the railway station in the morning to re- 
ceive his trunk and bring it here before noon. Indeed, before I had 
concluded, I rose to summon the boy and procure paper, pencil, and 
envelope. 

The message sent, we continued to converse about ourselves ; and 
in the course of our conversation, I asked him, if he could tell, 
what had become of the papers pertaining to the claim for insurance 
which my father had given to his father, on the occasion of the visit 
of my father and myself to Greenesburgh. 

“ I h ave no doubt,” he replied, “they are among the files of my 
father’s papers w T hich my mother has preserved ; and when I write 
to her, I will solicit a search and a return of them if found to you 
at once. If they were of importance to your father, they are to you, 
and you should have them.” 

I enquired also how it came that he had forgotten me, while I was 
free to say I treasured his memory. 

“ I admit the fact, Miss Jansen, and regret it now keenly and 
deeply ; and I cannot conceive a solution of the embarrassing enig- 
ma more worthy of your consideration than this: Your sex makes 
you more susceptible to receive and retain impressions than mine, to 
start with ; then you were at a more favorable age to be impressed 
by a new acquaintance, being several years younger than myself; 
then you had come from the seclusion of your mountain home 
where you had few children to become acquainted with, if any, in- 
deed, in midwinter outside your own family, while I was in a large 
school, associating in various ways with hundreds of girls and boys 
daily. Besides you went away from me with the dog which you ad- 
mired so greatly and prized so highly to be a souvenir of me at 
your side for several years ; while your extraordinary powers of de- 
lineating faces and involving in them expressions of individuality 
combined w r ith any of a myriad of moods and emotions, as evinced 
by the picture on the mantel of my chamber at present, enabled you 
to put and keep my personality before you in an objective form, 
wffiile I had nothing. I humbly confess I am derelict in forgetting 
you, while you have treasured my memory ; and if a promise can 
mitigate my just condemnation for a moment, I avow in the 
most solemn manner, that from this time on I will think a 
thousand times more of you than you — can? will? no — should 
think of me.” 


U 


162 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ Let the end determine,” I replied with candor, while I bowed in 
grateful recognition of his agreeable intentions. 


XXXI. 

For five weeks Philemon Holland was a guest of the Heart of 
Appalachia. 

The first three weeks we were together daily from morning till 
night, riding, driving, playing lawn tennis, or croquet, climbing up 
and down the mountain steeps, exploring the fissures in the great 
stratum of rocks that projects like a broken wall here and there 
along the mountain side, strolling through the beech and hemlock 
forests and gathering flowers, ferns, and lichens, alternately with in- 
specting the animal and vegetable stock of the two tracts, fondling 
the several special pets among the beasts and birds, and working 
with the bees ; and two happier beings never existed. I believed I 
had been happy before with Robley ; and so I was in a measure ; 
but the difference was as great as that between a bursting bud and a 
fully expanded flower joyously displaying its gorgeous hues in the 
eyes of the all-seeing sunshine, and freely exhaling its fragrance to 
the winds that wander around the world — life itself an expression of 
love in its perfection. 

I was surprised to find at first that Phil was an absolute novice in 
our out-of-door exercises, pursuits, and work, amusingly timid and 
cautious, and soon fatigued; but encouraged by my knowledge of 
the country for many miles around, my skill in horsemanship, my 
confidence and success in arranging and managing, and my hardi- 
hood, he kept at my side until he began to boast of his achieve- 
ments, saying betimes with a grave face and a merry twinkle in his 
eye, “ Really and truly, Miss Jansen, I verily believe that I can do 
anything that you can do, except make pictures and money for your- 
self and another on a mountain top, while you are living the grand- 
est life of health and happiness I can imagine.” His complexion 
underwent a complete change, from a pale approaching sallow to a 
ruddy and lustrous brown; the stoop in his shoulders in a great 
measure disappeared ; his muscles hardened ; his weight increased ; 
his step became light and elastic, his movements graceful, and his 
spirits as buoyant as those of a healthy boy ; and altogether he was 
advanced a score of degrees toward the standard of manly beauty 
in the eyes of others than myself — to my certain knowledge, those of 
my dear Aunt Melissa and Arabella, who, by reason of her insepara- 


JANE JANSEN. 


163 


ble connection with the family, presumed to comment freely on his 
personal appearance. 

But what gratified me above all was the unmistakable happiness 
which Philemon enjoyed in my company ; and that he was enamored 
with me I had no doubt. I saw love beaming in his eyes whenever 
they met mine ; I saw love gleaming in his smile whenever he ad- 
dressed me ; I saw love in the infinity of his actions daily and felt 
the genial influence of love in his presence as if it emanated from 
his person as a central sun of love ; but he never spoke a word of 
love nor uttered a sentiment of affection which I could construe into 
having myself for its object. I marveled in my musing betimes at 
this ; but the adage ever recurring to my mind that actions speak 
louder than words, I was satisfied in my ineffable happiness. 

With the beginning of the fourth week, however, I discerned a 
faint but all-pervading haze in the atmosphere of affection in which 
I lived, albeit the sun was in the meridian of his splendor; and 
daily, without any determinable cause, the haziness increased to a 
fogginess in which I breathed heavily and lost the joyousness of my 
heart and through which the sun shone weirdly as if undergoing 
an almost total eclipse. What had happened ? I could not divine. 
He was not ill ; on the contrary, he was in the full and untram- 
meled enjoyment of the best of health and the most bountiful store 
of vigor he had ever known. He had not conceived an aversion to 
me ; on the contrary, he was fascinated by me to a degree that em- 
barrassed me betimes. He had not become indifferent to me through 
an excess of familiarity; on the contrary, he was filled with the 
keenest and tenderest solicitude for me as if I had been a weakling- 
in his care. Yet he was ill at ease, silent, and moody; and some 
struggle involving his whole being was going on within him, the ex- 
citing cause of which, I was convinced from all that had taken place 
since we met, was in part myself and in part somebody else. Who ? 
Nobody to my knowledge was affected by our intimacy and associa- 
tion but Robley Benharn ; and could it be he? Robley certainly 
was mentioned by him more frequently and solicitously than before. 
Could he be jealous of the most excellent man whom I was proud 
to call my friend, and whose business interests were equally with 
my own an object daily of my most exacting regard ? Or did he 
feel that he was taking an unfair and dishonorable advantage of the 
voung man in his prolonged absence at the bedside of his father 
in perhaps his last illness ? Was he a thief in the night, robbing 
the very man whom he professed to be so desirous of becoming his 
friend, of his greatest treasure — the woman who had saved his life — 
the woman to whom he had devoted almost exclusively four of the 


164 


JANE JANSEN. 


most precious years of his existence — the woman with whose small 
fortune he generously had joined his great in an equal partnership 
— the woman evidently whom he loves and holds all the world be- 
sides as naught in the only hope of his heart to call her some day 
his wife? 

But whatsoever the conflict within the heart and brain of the troub- 
led man, there was only one thing for the woman to do who loved 
him without complication and without reserve or limitation, and 
that was to continue to pour out her being into his as freely and joy- 
ously as the cloud dissolves into a shower of sparkling diamonds to 
fall to the melancholy earth beneath and gladden and enliven it in 
their absorption. I lured him with beautiful flowers and butterflies 
to look out, and see the real world around him, as my dear aunt had 
advised me when I was in the throes of introspection. I decoyed 
him from one thicket to another, where in extricating himself from 
the pricking thorns in his flesh he might get away from those in his 
spirit. I led him from one waterfall to another — for what will the 
wiles of a women in love not do ? — that he might be splashed and 
wet through and through and haply wake from his day-dream of 
torture. I led him into the midst of my thirty colonies of bees and 
seated him passively on a stool. I lifted the lid of one of the 
strongest hives and turned it toward him that he might see it was 
brown with a myriad of bees. I made a feint as if I were about to 
shower them on his unprotected head. He did not flinch ; and I 
was conquered, not he. 

“ Miss Jansen, I deserve even more at your hands than what you 
make a happy feint to inflict upon me. You have surrounded me 
with the ultimate sweets of the figurative world of feeling and fancy 
as well as the literal, these apiarian, of fact ; and I have partaken of 
them without stint, for they were novel to my taste and most agree- 
able — so agreeable as to be a delirious intoxicant, bewildering my 
senses for the time being, and especially my sense of justice to you 
and others ; and now, in their remorseless reaction, I am tortured 
with retributive anguish. I have permitted myself to be placed in 
a false position ; and in doing so, I have done you and others great 
and grievous wrong, but happily yet not an unremediable wrong. It 
is not necessary that I should be more explicit. Suffice it, I ac- 
knowledge in humiliation and misery the error of my intoxication ; 
and believing that I may avert a consequential calamity to you and 
others, if I act immediately and decisively, I will do so. This very 
evening I will go away from the Heart of Appalachia a man in 
whom a complete revolution has taken place — one who has learned 
from your life on this mountain top that there are duties to be per- 


JANE JANSEN. 


165 


formed at any cost of suffering by all of us in our relations to one 
another, which done ennoble the doer and turn night into day, but 
which undone debase the recreant and turn day into night. I 
should be unworthy of your regard, Miss Jansen, did I remain a 
moment longer in your most agreeable and exalting company, and 
neglect an imperative duty which circumstances have imposed upon 
me.” 

u Do not go, Philemon,” I said to him frankly. “ You are haunt- 
ed by shadows which can be seen only by yourself, for they exist 
only in your own mind. The very day you came here, you made 
several false inferences from your limited premises ; and may you 
not be laboring under a delusion now which is only a false inference 
persisted in ? Seek farther in the open day in the world around 
you, and you will find that you are fighting fancies and not facts. 
In fine, since you involve me in your delirium, I am free to say that 
by remaining here you do not compromise me in any way with any- 
body. You can relieve your mind absolutely on that score. But if 
you persist in going away, which, haply may restore you to your 
happy self of a fortnight ago, I trust I may say with propriety, as a 
woman who has treasured your memory from childhood, that you 
will come again and soon to the Heart of Appalachia” — 

I was about to add “ that awaits you ; ” but seeing what I believed 
to be the emotion of love welling up from the bosom of Philemon 
into his neck and face and eyes till they seemed to be moistened 
with tears, I caught the contagion and burst into tears ; while I rea- 
lized that in doing so I revealed to Philemon fully what he for some 
unknown reason to me was most anxious and determined to conceal. 

He went away that evening ; and as I had treasured his memory, 
I clung to his person to the last — I accompanied him to the railway 
and saw him depart in a westwardly bound train. 


XXXII. 

The days that followed were wearisome in the extreme. The rou- 
tine of my daily work alone prevented me from lapsing into melan- 
cholia. I wandered whithersoever we had been together. I looked 
at the same trees, rocks, shrubs, flowers, lichens, ferns, insects, fungi, 
waterfalls, views — everything he had seen and commented on in his 
novel, comprehensive, and circumstantial manner. I dwelt upon 
them ; for they had a strange fascination for me— a beauty and sig- 
nificance I had never imagined before. The whole of my environ- 


166 


JANE JANSEN. 


ment bad been changed by the mind of the marvelous man as if by 
magic. The whole world indeed had assumed a new aspect, becom- 
ing a perfect paradise of beauty and happiness, while I, in the midst 
of it, could surfeit my senses without enjoyment. 

The return of Robley on the recovery of his father, instead of re- 
lieving my unhappy state, as I had hoped, aggravated it ; for I saw 
that he was worn with care and anxiety and suffering the tortures of 
a rejected lover, and I could neither soothe nor comfort him without 
incurring the risk of encouraging him to press his suit again and in- 
volve me in greater misery. 

At length, in the first week of September, two ladies, on their way 
in a carriage from Pittsburgh to Bedford Springs, became the tempo- 
rary guests of the Heart of Appalachia, to enable the younger 
of the two to regain strength sufficient to resume her journey 
over the mountains. They were mother and daughter, Mrs. 
Archibald Gregory, and Miss Grace ; the latter the most refined and 
delicate young lady I had ever beheld. I was attracted to her im- 
mediately, as fortunately she was to me ; and in a few days, to our 
mutual surprise and delight, we were inseparable friends — so much 
so that she begged her mother to return to Pittsburgh and leave her 
with me until she would send for the carriage to take her back. Her 
mother did so ; and for the first time in my life, I found a fascinat- 
ing fellowship with a young woman of approximately my own age. 
She seemed to me to be the first balmy breath of spring incarnate ; 
while she was in fact so delicately formed and so exquisitely sensi- 
tive that I feared to delineate her features lest I might offend with 
the coarseness of my finest lines. 

Among her many accomplishments she played the piano as if it 
were a part of herself and the essential part through which her ex- 
istence found a sensuous expression. She had the gift of improvi- 
sation to an extreme degree ; and as I listened, and followed her in 
the fantasy of feeling which she expressed in the most harmonious 
combinations of sound, I felt as if a new sense had been evolved in 
me and that a perfect paradise must be filled with music as well as 
beauty in form and color. 

She, on the other hand, was affected by my gift of reproducing 
visible things ; and I found a new delight in my art in letting my 
pencil shape before her wondering eyes, with approximately the 
rapidity of thought, the fragmentary but easily recognizable forms 
of horses, dogs, and deers in various artistic attitudes, of ducks in 
flight over mirroring lakes, of doves and pheasants and crows in 
divers positions and combinations, of flowers and ferns and trees, 
and especially the handsome form and features of Robley, whom I 


JANE JANSEN. 


167 


soon perceived she regarded with admiration. 

The first time I did this, the afternoon of the second day after 
her arrival, she sighed deeply and kissed with fervor a large and lus- 
trous rose-cut diamond set in an engagement ring which she wore on 
the forefinger of her left hand. 

The following day, after watching curiously my pencil make a few 
apparently unmeaning dots here and lines there and then sud- 
denly connect them and enliven them into a smiling likeness of 
Robley, she kissed her ring as before and said, “ If you knew the su- 
perior man whose love for me this diamond symbolizes, and the ag- 
ony I endured which brought me to the brink of the grave when I 
fancied he had become estranged or enamored with another wo- 
man, you would not bring before me the image of this handsome 
man, who is as lovely in disposition and manners as he is handsome 
in form and feature. But as long as I wear this precious symbol ” — 
kissing tbe stone rapturously — “ I am proof against any invasion 
except perhaps a flitting fancy, a passing regard, or a momentary 
admiration, such as Dr. Benham certainly might excite in any 
woman. By the way, Jane, with your intense appreciation of the 
beautiful and good, I cannot conceive how you have been associated 
so intimately for years with Dr. Benham, without being now so 
deeply in love with him and so jealous of any other young woman 
who admired him as to make you wretched in the extreme, quiver- 
ing eternally between an all-involving hope to win and fear to lose. 
I am sure, I ” — kissing the diamond repeatedly — “ I am sure, were I 
as free as you — well, I certainly can say, that I do not know what 
might not happen ; but as it is I am assured of the love of the very 
best man that ever lived, and my heart is adamant, like this precious 
talisman itself” — kissing the stone for the fourth or fortieth time — 
“ against all the world of man kind besides.” 

A week later she said, “ And what a marvelous physician Dr. Ben- 
ham is, too ! I am sure from the time he was called in first by my 
mother, to take charge of the restoration of my health, he has given 
me nothing but a good shaking up on horseback daily, and I began 
to improve in health and vigor and spirits immediately. You re- 
member, Jane, I was so weak the first morning we went out together, 
he was obliged to lift me into the saddle and hold me for really I do 
not know how long — I was so faint ; and I would be ungrateful in 
the extreme did I not acknowledge freely his skill as a physician 
and his many agreeable accomplishments as a gentleman. And 
what a touch for a surgeon he has ! Could the hand of a man be at 
the same time firmer and gentler than his ! Really and truly, Jane, 
I cannot imagine how you could resist falling in love with him years 


168 


JANE JANSEN. 


ago, unless it be that you are as hale and hearty and hardy as he 
and do not feel the want of his helping hand and strong arm at 
every step; while I — well, my mother used to tell me just before we 
set out on this trip which has proved so beneficial to my health, that 
I was wasted by worrying over my love affairs to such an extent 
that I was simply a sentient soap-bubble, a breath of human life in- 
flamed by love and set afloat in the air encased in a film of water.” 

A week later, on her return from a gallop with Robley over the 
mountains in the bracing air of a glorious morning in September, 
she said, as she sat down in a glow of enthusiasm on the side of my 
bed in my chamber, whither she had run up the stairs with surpris- 
ing agility for a young woman at the point of death from a broken 
heart a little more than a fortnight before, “ Oh, Jane, we have had 
a royal ride. We were away over the mountain as far as the old 
stone mill ; and just for curiosity we went in and were weighed by 
the miller — and what a comical old character he is with his shoul- 
ders higher than his head, and his roguish blue eyes half hid be- 
neath his shagg}' eyebrows, white with flour, and his hooked nose 
almost touching his chin, and his chuckle of good humor away 
down in his boots I really believe ! And what do you think ! I 
weighed ninety-seven pounds and Robley one hundred and ninety- 
eight ; and the funny old miller said I w 7 as the flour after it had 
been bolted, and Robley was the wheat as it came from the field, 
straw, chaff, screenings, and all, including a big yellow T dog with 
crooked legs and cropped ears and tail and a wall-eye under the 
wagon ! Did you ever hear such a comparison ! And the funny 
old fellow invited us to come back again and get weighed ; and 
Robley and I have agreed to go back once a week as long as I re- 
main, which will be, you may be sure, as long as I continue to im- 
prove and have such a jolly time ! Oh,” — kissing her engagement 
ring rapturously, and more perhaps from habit than conscious in- 
tent. u By the way, Jane, do you not think there is great danger of 
my losing this precious pledge of his affection in the mountain, 
while riding, driving, climbing, or roughing it generally as I am be- 
ginning to do ; and that, when I go out, I had better leave it with 
you for safekeeping? Besides, it is actually becoming too tight for 
my finger; and as soon as I return to Pittsburgh, I will get Mr. 
Biggs, the jeweler, to cut it and insert a piece of gold in it. There ! 

/ It took quite an effort to get it over my knuckle. Keep it for me, 
Jane, in your casket; and guard it as you would my life, for with- 
out it and its world of significance I might as well be dead and bur- 
ied beneath these everlasting mountains.” 

Several days afterward the inseparable companions were out all 


JANE JANSEN. 


169 


day — not returning to the inn in fact until ten o’clock at night; and 
as it had been stormy during the afternoon and evening with an 
occasional heavy fall of rain, I was in a state of anxiety bordering 
on distress about them. 

“ Oh, Jane ! Jane ! this has been the red letter day of my life, the 
grandest I have ever spent,” began the enthusiastic girl in her hyper- 
bolic style which was more of a habit with her than intentional ex- 
aggeration. “ Somehow we got lost in the mountains just as the 
first heavy shower of rain came up in the afternoon and wet us 
through and through in a few minutes after we had drawn our 
horses under the drooping boughs of a grand old beech; while the 
deep breathing of the wind in the forest, the pulsating shiver of the 
leaves, and the patter of the rain were making the sweetest music 
I have ever heard. 

44 Then who should come along the path we had ridden on but a 
boy of twelve or fourteen years of age, whistling an original moun- 
tain aria, without melody, but in time with his footsteps and 
strangely in harmony with the grand orchestra of nature — the most 
comical looking chap you can conceive of, in a ragged blue shirt, 
a patched pair of brown pantaloons with a strap for a suspender 
over one shoulder, without shoes or stockings, and wearing on his 
head a conical slouch hat of the color of clay, with a grey-squir- 
rel’s tail pinned to the side of it, and a hole in the crown through 
which his long yellow hair protruded in a drooping tuft. 4 Hello ! 
my boy, can you tell us where we can find refuge in this neighbor- 
hood ? ’ enquired Robley. ‘ I can’t say ez I kin,’ answered the boy 
in a peculiar drawling tone, shaking his head. ‘ I know whur youens 
kin git slathers uv sang an’ sassyfrac an’ pipsissewa an’ boneset an’ 
pennyrial, an’ I’ve hearn tell uv mountin varmifuge, but I never 
knowed nawthin’ uv refuge. What fur a root or yarb is it?’ 
Oh, I laughed so heartily I thought I would fall from my horse. 
4 Well, my boy, if you cannot tell us where we can find refuge, can 
you tell us where we are ? ’ at length queried Robley. ‘ Why, don’t 
youens know ? ’ 4 No, I assure you, my good boy, we do not.’ 4 Why 
youens is right hyur,’ answered the boy with a look of innocent 
astonishment that would have killed you, Jane — I am sure it would, 
in your efforts while laughing to reproduce it with your pencil. 4 So 
we are, that is very true, and very strange that we did not recognize 
the fact ourselves. Now, can you tell us what is your name?’ 
‘Yes; uv course I kin.’ 4 Well, what is it?’ 4 Pete.’ 4 But Pete 
what? ’ 4 Pete nawthin’.’ 4 You do not mean to say the boys and 

girls around here have no other name for you than Pete, do you?— 

V 


170 


JANE JANSEN. 


what do they call you ? ’ ‘ Some uv the boys calls me Rattler, ’cause 
I kin ketch more rattlesnakes than the whole caboodle uv them an’ 
I al’ays hev a rattle ur two somewhur in my clothes ; and some 
uv the girells calls me ’Possum, ’cause I lets on I’m asleep when 
they make snoots at me.’ Did you ever hear, Jane, anything so 
supremely ludicrous in the whole of your born days !— I am sure, I 
never did. Then Robley asked him, ‘ Where does your father live, 
my boy?’ 4 Hain’t got naw father.’ ‘Nor mother?’ ‘ Naw.’ ‘With 
whom do you live then?’ ‘The ol’ woman.’ ‘And what do the 
people of the neighborhood call her ? ’ ‘ Some uv them calls her ol’ 

Graddy Beazley, and some uv them calls her jes Grad, fur short 
like.’ ‘ And who is she, my good boy ? ’ ‘ Why, I jes tol’ youens, 

she’s the ol’ woman I live with.’ ‘ Oh, yes, that is true ; but where 
does she live? ’ ‘ Hyur in the mountins.’ ‘ Can you take us to her 

house?’ ‘Yes; I kin.’ ‘ How far is it ? ’ ‘It isn’t fur at all; it’s 
right hyur on the yother side uv the holler — ef you wouldn’t look so 
much at thet laughin’ girell, you could see the smoke cornin’ out uv 
the chimley right afore your eyes.’ And with a look of supreme 
contempt at our stupidity, Pete, alias the Rattler, alias the ’Possum, 
continued his walk in the direction of the smoke which we saw very 
plainly when we looked up and followed the bov through the rain. 

“ In half a minute, we got to the open door of the log cabin and 
dismounted, and Robley and I went in while Pete took our horses to 
the cow-shed ; and then what happened, Jane, it will take me a week 
to tell you all. Suffice it to-night — for I am nearly dead with 
laughing — we found old Graddy Beazley a little old skinny woman 
of the color of leather, nodding and shaking with palsy, wearing a 
barred flannel gown, and a long tow apron, with red woolen stock- 
ings without shoes on her feet, and a red woolen cap on her head, 
and smoking a pipe with a stem so short I do not see how she could 
keep it in her toothless mouth without burning her nose forever 
hanging over the bowl. I thought she certainly must be a witch ; 
and after I had chatted with her about the weather and the mount- 
ain, while Robley was out after more wood to make a roaring fire in 
the open fire-place to dry my clothing, I begged her to tell my for- 
tune. And what do you think she said? ‘ You silly goose ! ’ — her 
very \vords — ‘ I am not so much of a gypsy or witch as you. Young 
eyes like yours look into the future, while old eyes like mine look 
only into the past ! ’ I thought she was as simple as Pete, and 
found her as wise as a Sibyl of old. And after a while Robley and I 
had supper with the wise old woman and the simple boy ; and what 
do you think we had for supper? You could never guess in the 
wide, wide world. Wood-chuck fried in its own fat, slap-jacks baked 


JANE JANSEN. 


171 


in a skillet covered with a lid and buried in the hot ashes of the 
open fire, and buckwheat honey almost as black as tar ! And 
really, Jane, I never sat down to a meal that I enjoyed more — I was 
so hungry and tired. And what do you think! I am sure it is the 
most ludicrous mistake I ever made in my life!— I thought the 
wood-chuck from its name was a kind of wild fowl that was found 
in the forests of the mountain ; and Pete literally snorted with 
laughter, and the old woman teeheed and dropped her knife and fork 
from her shaking hands, and Robley leaned back and fairly roared, 
when I facetiously asked Pete if he had caught the bird by throw- 
ing salt on its tail ! And not understanding what they were laugh- 
ing at, I made matters worse by saying that the wing I was eating 
was most curiously shaped for the wing of a fowl ! Well, I do not 
care a bauhee, if I did make a mistake. I enjoyed the feast and the 
fun as much as all the rest put together ; and I would want no bet- 
ter fare and no finer dwelling than old Graddy Beazley’s had I only 
Robley — or another infinitely more agreeable, perhaps — to share it 
with me in health and happiness as to-day. Oh, Jane, you cannot 
conceive how radiant Robley was with beauty and bliss in the fire- 
light of that lowly log cabin in the depth of the mountain forest ! 
and how sweetly the variety of sounds within and without — the 
roar and crackle of the big fire in the open grate, the singing of the 
sap in the green boughs, the sizzing of the wet wood, the sputtering 
of the rain falling down the big chimney among the fiery coals, the 
drip from the eaves of the cabin, and the wind and rain in the for- 
est around — combined to form a symphony that thrilled me through 
and through to the very centre of my heart of hearts ! 

“ But I am getting so sleepy I scarcely can keep my eyes open. 
Some little time after dispatching the last remnant of the wood-chuck, 
slap-jacks and buckwheat honey on the table, the rain ceased ; and 
Robley having given the old woman a five-dollar bill and the boy a 
silver dollar, we came home as fast as we could — Pete leading my 
horse for a mile perhaps along a path through the forest which he alone 
could see, and Robley blindly following, until we came to the open 
road, where we could find our way readily from a faint reflection, 
of the little light in the overcast sky above, in the water that filled 
the rut on either side, and the depressions here and there in the 
middle of the highway. ‘ Good night, good night,’ said Robley and 
I, almost in the same breath, as we went away from the boy. ‘ Come 
back agin, an’ I’ll ketch another bird fur youens,’ called out Pete, who 
perhaps is not as simple as I took him to be.” 

At the end of the fourth week the beautiful rosy -cheeked sylph of 
sunshine, Grace Gregory, received a peremptory command from her 


172 


JANE JANSEN. 


mother to go home immediately in the carriage which she had sent 
with the bearer of her message, a faithful old coachman of the 
family, and as prim and precise as faithful, Nicholas Macorquordale 
— a name which Grace, when a little girl had shortened into and 
rendered mofe euphonious to her musical ear as Nickie Corker, and 
which the exacting old Scotchman — presumptively, at least, from his 
cognomen — tolerated only from her as a relic of irresponsible inno- 
cent childhood. Accompanying the command, was an invitation to 
me to return with Grace to continue and cement the intimacy so 
happily begun between us, by accepting the Gregory mansion in the 
East End and its belongings as my own during the month of Octo- 
ber, the most delightful of the autumn months in Pennsylvania. 
And perhaps, just as Grace was chagrined and disconcerted bv her 
command, I was delighted and encouraged in the course I had de- 
termined in a measure to pursue ; for I was convinced that Grace 
and Robley were as deeply enamored with each other as it was pos- 
sible for a young man and woman to be who were especially suited 
to each other in every particular, and who were kept apart only by 
Robley’s hopeless loyalty to me and Grace’s very questionable devo- 
tion to the very best man that ever lived in the world of her hyper- 
bolic speech and irreconcilable action. Her engagement with the 
n^sterious being of so great effect on her head and so little on her 
heart must be broken, in justice to all, Robley, Grace, and especially 
the incommensurable unknown who is deserving certainly of a wo- 
man who can love him with an entirety of affection. Besides, it 
would be a great relief to me to have Robley released freely and 
completely in my presence ; for he would realize then that if I de- 
sired to withdraw my refusal of his hand, or suspend my acceptance 
indefinitely, I had it in my power from first to last to speak but a 
single word and my wishes would be complied with. And over and 
above every other consideration, I was inclined to take a decided part 
in breaking off my lovely companion’s engagement with the myster- 
ious donor of her diamond ring ; for the moment she spoke of his 
extraordinary merits, I thought of Philemon Holland and that pos- 
sibly he might be the man who had pledged his love to her. And 
having been inoculated with the virus of this suspicion, I soon was 
pervaded by the poison. I dreaded to hear her speak of him, lest 
she might disclose his identity ; and yet I was quivering with anx- 
iety to determine the fact myself. And the more I dwelt on the 
approximate correspondence between the five weeks’ visit of Phile- 
mon and the month or more of worry of the poor girl over an im- 
agined estrangement of her lover, and the sudden change that came 
over Philemon, and his insistence of the imperative demands of jus- 


JANE JANSEN. 


173 


lice to others besides myself in his last remarks, the more I was sat- 
isfied he was the plighted lover of Grace, and that, when he went 
away from me in the agonies of a broken heart as I was fain to be- 
lieve, he went as a man of honor to fulfill his promise of marriage 
to the firstling of his affections at any sacrifice of self the act might 
demand. It is exactly what he would do under the circumstances, 
I felt as sure as of my own existence ; and I looked upon and encour- 
aged the intimacy of Robley and Grace as the happiest solution of 
our entanglement by effecting in the end an exchange of lovers. 

I accepted the invitation and at once began to make preparations 
to depart after breakfast the following morning as indicated in the 
letter ; but Grace by no means was ready to go — on the contrary, she 
was petulantly reluctant and began to devise ways and means to 
prolong her stay. To the coachman, who stood as straight as a ram- 
rod with his hat in his hand in the most formal manner, she plead- 
ed that she had an engagement for the whole of the next day with 
the good physician who miraculously had restored her to perfect 
health and she could not and would not be ungrateful to him for the 
world. 

“ I have my orders, Miss Grace ; and to-morrow morning at nine 
and a half o’clock sharp, the carriage will be at the door ; and you 
will not compromise me in the estimation of your honored mother 
by causing me a moment’s delay.” 

“ But Nickie dear, cannot you have one of the horses go lame 
and require re-shoeing and treatment for a day at least, or the tires 
cut and contracted at the blacksmith shop in the village, or some- 
thing done — I am sure at home, Nickie dear, every now and then, 
when I wish to go out driving and mamma and you think I had bet- 
ter remain in the house, there is always something wrong, either 
Tom or Bob has the colic, or — dear, oh dear, Nickie Corker, there is 
a speck of dirt on your collar. Let me wipe it off with my hand- 
kerchief. There. And who in the world arranged your necktie in 
that careless manner — somebody, I am sure, who does not think of 
you the thousandth part of what I do. Let me adjust it properly. 
There. Now, Nickie dear, cannot you do something for me — just 
this once — and I promise you I will never ask you to do anything 
for me again. You are so good, Nickie dear — mamma and every- 
body say you are so good, and I think you are just as handsome as 
good — you know I do, Nickie dear. Now, will you not — just one 
little day ? Why, by driving a little faster than usual on the good 
road, we can make up the time, and it will not hurt the horses 
a bit.” 

“ No, Miss Grace, I will do anything reasonable for you that is not 


174 


JANE JANSEN. 


contrary to my orders ; and what you ask, if not unreasonable, is in 
violation of my orders.” 

“ Mr. Nickie Corker, you are absolutely horrid ! And the way you 
are dressed to-day, you look like a perfect guy t And no wonder, 
too, you are a bachelor and always will be : you are too exacting 
and particular. I never say anything in the world like you, except 
a big piece of iron machinery at the exposition that did nothing but 
cut nails all day long and all of them exactly alike. I will not 
speak to you again, you horrid thing.” 


XXXIII. 

Miss Gregory was a creature of habit to a great degree ; and being 
exquisitely sensitive to outside influences, she seemed to be contin- 
ually playing hide-and-seek with herself in the present and past. 
While she was with Robley and myself, she was in a new environ- 
ment and absolutely without restraint; but the instant she caught 
sight of the familiar carriage, she unconsciously put herself into the 
formal attitude of a visiting lady, and actually addressed me as Miss 
Jansen and referred to Robley as Dr. Benham ; and when the old 
coachman came into her presence, she went out of the world around 
her into that of the past, and assailed the adamantine Nicholas 
Macorquordale with the speech and blandishments and volatility of 
a child. I recalled her habit of kissing her engagement ring, to keep 
her in mind of her plighted troth to an absent one and steel her 
heart against any influence to which she might be subjected in the 
new world of delights which she had entered unexpectedly on her 
way to Bedford Springs. 

This gave me great uneasiness. For, I said to myself, if objec- 
tive persons and things take her back from the present to a former 
state, will not the sight of her plighted lover restore to her her 
former affection, which was of so engrossing a nature as to involve 
her very existence ? If she ever see Philemon Holland again, will 
she not love him as fully and freely as I ? and will she not have a 
greater claim upon him than I — a prior, which I must respect? 

I began to wish the unknown lover would not prove to be Phile- 
mon. But I could and would take no chances. In case he should 
be Philemon, an antidote to the effect of his person on the most im- 
pressionable heart of the beautiful girl must be secured in the per- 
son of Robley. 

At the first opportunity, accordingly, I enjoined Robley to fol- 


JANE JANSEN. 


175 


low us secretly to Pittsburgh, and take lodgings in the East End as 
near to Idavoll, the Gregory mansion, as possible, and send me his 
address by mail at the earliest moment. 


XXXIV. 

The parting between Grace and Robley was strangely formal — she 
in the presence of the magnetic Macorquordale and the Gregory car- 
riage of state, and he in the presence of one to whom he had vowed 
eternal love before he became enamored with another — but no mat- 
ter, in the presence of one in whose management of his affairs even 
without his knowledge he had absolute confidence from his ample 
experience. 

And on we went : stopping at Ligonier for dinner ; at Greenes- 
burgh, for supper, lodging, and breakfast the next morning ; then at 
Jacktown, for a luncheon at Mrs. McIntyre’s, and at Turtle Creek for 
dinner ; reaching our destination in the early evening. 

As long as the Laurel and Chestnut ranges of the mountains be- 
hind us were to be seen while we were crossing the minor western 
ridges of Randolph, or Huckleberry, and Grapeville, Grace sat on 
the front seat of the carriage looking back, alternately sighing and 
saying, “ What a delightful time I have had ! I wonder if Dr. Ben- 
ham and I will recognize each other should we ever meet again ! ” 
Afterward, she sat on the back seat looking forward ; and as we were 
ascending Chalfant’s hill, after leaving Turtle Creek, she suddenly 
said, biting her lower lip and pausing an instant after the mention of 
my name, “ Oh, Miss Jansen ! what in the world will I do ! I have 
left my engagement ring behind in your casket ! I never thought of 
it until this minute ! What shall I do — what can I do ! In all my 
trials, it was my solace ; in all my temptations, it was my safety. 
How can I ever meet him, whose precious love it symbolizes, and it 
not on my hand, that he may see and feel that I have been true to 
him ? ” 

“ Do not worry, Grace,” I replied calmly. u I have it in my 
purse. Shall I give it to you now ? ” 

“ Oh, no ; never mind. I will not put you to the trouble. You 
were so good to think of it. I never can repay you for the one ten- 
thousandth part of all the kindness and consideration you have 
shown me.” 


176 


JANE JANSEN. 


XXXV. 

The morning after our arrival I found myself alone in a large and 
most luxuriously furnished chamber on the second floor of the 
Gregory mansion. The windows, almost hid from view behind 
triple curtains, were open, and I went from one to the other, to look 
out on the fine residences and elaborately laid out grounds in the 
neighborhood, and to get relief from an oppression which I felt in 
the interior of the close and stuffy room. 

I felt, moreover, strangely lonely. For while the air was filled 
with the infinity of discordant sounds which together form the pe- 
culiar sullen roar of a great city, this diversity of sound was too re- 
mote and confounded to attract any particular attention ; and I 
seemed to be in the silence and gloom of a cavern, with bats flutter- 
ing mysteriously to and fro on their most exquisitely sensitive wings 
of finger-spread film. No audible creak followed my footsteps on 
the soft velvet carpet; no rustle, my parting the curtains ; no crush, 
my sitting in the easy chair or on the luxurious divan. Even the 
marble-cased clock on the mantel gave forth no sound save when it 
struck the hours and quarters in a low muffled tone — a sound 
which at first suggested a hell submerged in the sea, and afterward 
reminded me of, and became associated inseparably with in my 
musing, the sweet-toned bells of the temples of Japan with which 
often in childhood my being had vibrated in a breath-suspending 
thrill of pleasure. 

At length, just after the clock had struck ten, a maid-servant, who 
had entered the room and approached me noiselessly, startled me by 
addressing me at my side and handing me a letter which I recog- 
nized as a message from Robley. u Pardon me, Miss Jansen. I 
knocked at your door repeatedly ; and hearing no response, I conclu- 
ded you had not recovered fully from the fatigue of your journey and 
fallen asleep. I made free to enter, accordingly, that your waking 
eyes might be gladdened by the sight of a letter— from one perhaps 
who is interested in you. The carrier pretended the letter was for 
me. ‘ Now, don’t blush, Jenny,’ said he, when he knew just as well 
as I did that my name wasn’t Jenny, but Tilly. 4 Now, don’t blush, 
Jenny,’ said he, as I said before, 4 here is a letter from one who, if he 
is as handsome as his handwriting, is so far up in G as to be out 
of sight ’—his very words ; for he is dreadfully slangy, like all car- 
riers, newsboys, policemen, and others who live in the streets. 4 You 
saucy rascal,’ said I; 4 and what business is it of yours if he is? 
Nobody but a blind person would say the same of you.’ 4 Tra-la, 


JANE JANSEN. 


177 


Jenny; what are you giving us?’ said he — his very words; and 
away he went, whistling ‘ Sweet Violets.’ I couldn’t help then look- 
ing particularly at the letter and seeing the beautiful handwriting 
and the postmark Pittsburgh ; and naturally I conluded from the 
circumstances, coupled with the short time you have been here that 
it was from a handsome young man, who might be a lawyer, doctor, 
or other highly educated person, who certainly was interested in you 
and in whom perhaps you might be interested too ; and so I brought 
it up immediately before anybody in the house besides myself could 
see it and begin to talk about it; for everybody about the house, I 
wish you to know, isn’t as free from curiosity and a tendency to gos- 
sip and pry into other people’s affairs as your humble servant, Tilly 
Sanderson. Read your letter, Miss Jansen ; and don’t mind me. 
And if you wish to write a reply, I’ll stick it in the box at the cor- 
ner and nobody about the house hut ourselves will know anything 
about it. But dear me ! what is on your hair just above your fore- 
head? I beg your pardon, Miss Jansen, but you have given your 
beautiful black hair a dab with your powder-puff! How fortunate 
in me to discover it before you went down stairs to receive company 
— perhaps, the very man who has written this note to inform you he 
will call this morning, or not later than this afternoon, as one natur- 
ally might conclude from his haste. Please step to the glass and see 
if what I say is not literally true. You have a dab of powder in 
your lovely black hair just over the middle of your forehead. In a 
moment of forgetfulness, perhaps, while thinking about your hand- 
some friend and wondering when he would w r rite and what he would 
say and how he would say it, you have taken up your powder-ball 
instead of your handkerchief and pressed it against your troubled 
brow ; or dreaming, perhaps, you have laid your head down on the 
powder-ball, mistaking it naturally for a handkerchief bunched up 
by the hand— having seen it in fact only through half closed eyes 
and being more intent on what was going on inside your head than 
out.” 

Happily, however, the sudden irruption of Grace in a state of ex- 
citement brought the loquacity of Tilly to a termination and com- 
pelled her to retire from the room. 

“ Oh, Jane, what do you think ? I am trembling all over ! While 
unpacking my trunk and rummaging through my clothes this morn- 
ing, I fancied suddenly I smelled mountain tea and pennyroyal ; and 
holding up to my nose the gown I had in my hand, I recognized it 
at once as the one I wore the day Robley and I were caught in the 
rain and took supper with old Graddy Beazley and Pete, and all the 

W 


178 


JANE JANSEN. 


events of that red-letter day of my life came back to me in a flash. 
I remembered the thousand things I never had time to tell you a 
word about. I put my hand in the pocket of the scented gown, and 
sure enough there was the handkerchief of Robley, and wrapped 
up carefully in it the wishbone of the wood-chuck we had for sup- 
per. Pete had the bone on his plate, and having cleaned it, wished 
to pull it and break it with me to see which of us would get the 
smaller piece and be married first ; and I would not pull it with 
anybody but Robley ; and as we pulled and pulled, old Graddy 
Beazley laughed, and Pete laughed, and Robley laughed, and I 
laughed more than all of them together ; and at last the bone broke 
exactly in the middle ; and Pete said at once that Robley and I 
would be married at the same time, and that I must take the pieces 
home and put them over the door and the first young man to enter 
the door and go under the bone would be my husband and the first 
young woman to do so would be Robley’s wife ; and Robley gave me 
his handkerchief to wrap up the bones and bring them home ; and 
here they are, and I had forgotten all about them. Dear me ! how 
they carry me back to that, the happiest day of my life, and bring 
Robley before me and Pete and the old woman and myself as we 
were in the firelight of the open grate together, while the rain was 
dripping from the roof of the cabin and falling like a curtain of 
glistening pearls before the open door, and, as if in a palace of en- 
chantment, I looked around me and saw all the beauty and the com- 
fort of a happy home in the smoke-browned joists of the floor over- 
head, the ladder in the corner by which Pete ascended and descend- 
ed, the winter bed-clothing hung on wooden pegs on the walls, and 
the old woman’s bed in the corner, with a curtain around it too short 
to conceal the scanty stores of the poor old woman, in a bag and a 
box. Dear, dear Robley ” — kissing rapturously and repeatedly his 
handkerchief — “ I can never forget you ! and dear, dear Pete — Do 
you know, Jane, that if ever I have a carriage of my own, I will 
send for Pete and make a tiger of him. Would he not make the 
drollest and cutest attendant in the world? And just imagine for 
an instant the character he would become in swell circles when his 
alias of the ’Possum would be known generally ! I can see and hear 
him now just as distinctly as if he were before me, ‘ Some uv the 
girells calls me ’Possum, ’cause I lets on I’m asleep when they 
make snoots at me ! ’ Did you ever hear anything so perfectly ludi- 
crous ! But, by the way, Jane, this wishbone of the wood-chuck 
does not look a bit like any wishbone I have ever seen — of a chick- 
en, duck, or turkey. It looks as if it had teeth ; and it has, as sure 
as my name is Grace Gregory. Do tell me, Jane, what a wood-chuck 


JANE JANSEN. 


179 


is ? I know I made a laughable mistake in thinking it a kind of 
mountain fowl ; but I never suspected before it was not some kind 
of bird. What is it, Jane? I know you will not deceive me, like 
Robley and Pete.” 

I informed her as well as I could of the nature of the American 
marmot, which is called indifferently wood-chuck or ground-hog by 
the mountaineers of Pennsylvania ; adding that when fat in the fall 
before going into winter quarters to hybernate until spring, it is es- 
teemed bv many a delicious article of food ; and that Graddy Beaz- 
ley and Pete, in setting it before her fried in its own fat, doubtless 
believed they were providing her the best supper possible in Septem- 
ber among the poor of the Alleghany mountains. 

“ Well, it was a delicious piece of meat,” resumed Grace, “and I 
enjoyed it; but if I had known before it was a ground-hog, the very 
name of which is repulsive, I never could have eaten a morsel of it. 
Ugh ! just to think of it ! And this wishbone of the wood-chuck, 
then, is nothing more nor less than the lower jaw-bones of a ground- 
hog, the lion’s share of which I have eaten fried in its own grease ! 
No wonder the ’Possum woke up and rolled over and laughed ; and 
no wonder, too, the old woman called me a silly goose, for more rea- 
sons than one. Well, I do not care, I never was happier in my life 
and never expect to be if I live to be as old as old Graddy Beazley 
herself, who must be as old as the hills if her infirmities stand for 
anything ; and I will treasure this handkerchief and these bones to 
the very last day of my life let it be as long as it may, and think of 
dear, dear Robley and Pete every time I see them.” 

At this juncture, thinking the happy moment had arrived when I 
could trust Grace to see and take in her hand and even put on her 
fore-finger her engagement ring — the handkerchief of Robley coun- 
terbalancing the ring of Philemon Holland, or whomsoever her 
plighted lover might be — I took the ring from my purse and gave it 
to her, as the veriest trifle in the world to me, when in fact it in- 
volved my whole existence. 

“ Dear me, Jane! I verily believe I am the most forgetful person 
in the world while you are just the opposite. I never would have 
thought of it if you had not taken it out of your purse in my sight ; 
apd oh, dear Jane ” — burying her face in Robley ’s handkerchief— “ I 
wish you had ^ept it out of my sight forever ! I love Robley and 
Robley alone ; and if I do not marry him, I will never marry an- 
other.” 

“ But my dear girl, this ring is an engagement ring, a pledge of 
the most solemn and sacred character which you have accepted from 
a good man who loves you, and in every way is worthy of your love, 


180 


JANE JANSEN. 


as you have declared to me repeatedly in the most positive terms ; 
and certainly you will not break }mur plighted troth with him 
rashly and without due consideration, and attach yourself perhaps 
hopelessly to another, although he be as handsome and good as my 
friend and associate, Robley Ben ham ? ” 

“ Yes, I will Jane, and this very day ; for I believe that howsoever 
much I fancied I loved and fretted and worried over imagined slights 
and suspected neglect, I never really and truly loved until I met 
Robley; and since you do not love him and cannot love him, for 
some unaccountable reason to me, I see no reason why I may not 
love him and hope to win him some day by the truest devotion 
which I know and feel I can have for him to the end of my days.” 

“ But what will you do with your plighted lover ? ” 

“ I do not know — Yes, I do, Jane; and I will tell you. Since you, 
who had the most natural claim on Robley have relinquished it in 
my favor, I, who have the most legal claim on my plighted lover, 
will turn him over to you. And, Jane, dear Jane, now that I come 
to think of it, he will suit you as well as Robley suits me in every 
way conceivable.” 

“ Is he handsome ? ” 

“He is not as handsome as Robley in my eyes, but he may be in 
yours. You know, there is no accounting for tastes. He is taller, 
but not nearly so heavy. And Jane, I really believe he is equally 
as good and courteous and kind as Robley ; and while he reads and 
thinks and knows ten thousand times as much as Robley, he has 
not the one ten-thousandth part of Robley’s rollicking good humor 
and fondness for out-of-door sports and athletic exercises. He is an 
indoor bookworm who some day will be a great scientific or literary 
light ; while Robley will be a widely known man of business, and a 
politician, who in due time will go to the legislature and to congress 
and live the remainder of his days a possible governor of the great 
state of Pennsylvania.” 

“ Well, Grace, you certainly have depicted a very attractive man 
to me and one whom I believe I could and would love with all my 
heart ; but words have one meaning perhaps in your mouth and an- 
other in my ears, and I cannot say that I will accept your lover un- 
til I shall have found that my conception of his form and features 
and implied qualities agree in general at least if not in detail with 
yours. I have my paper and pencil at hand, and I will draw your 
rejected lover as I conceive him to be in part from your description 
and in part, perhaps, unconsciously from my desires.” 

I then began to make a profile delineation of the form and fea- 
tures of Philemon Holland, beginning at his heels and working up- 


JANE JANSEN. 


181 


ward to the back of his head — a most provoking proceeding to the 
impatient girl. 

u No, Jane ; I am sorry to say, he is not as straight in the back as 
Robley ; and you must stoop the shoulders and bring forward the 
knees a little — more yet — more yet — more yet ” — 

“ Not a hair’s breadth more, I beseech you, Grace; or I will con- 
clude with a broken heart that your rejected lover is the old miller 
of the mountain who weighed you and Robley.” 

“The dear old soul! If ever I marry Robley, that old hump- 
backed miller and old Graddy Beazley shall be at my wedding ; and 
if they will not dance together, I will dance with the dear old man 
and Robley with the good woman ! ” 

The girl watched the movements of my pencil with increasing in- 
terest until I stopped in affected despair — the picture complete in 
every particular save the essential lines and dots to make it a like- 
ness of anybody. 

“ Ah, Grace, it is useless for me to go farther. You have described 
to me not a single feature ; and given me not the slightest intimation 
of the natural or habitual expression of his face. If I were to go on 
now, from the shape you have compelled me to give his back, I 
would make his head, chin, and mouth rather small — so ; the angle 
of his jaw and his ear — so ; his forehead, rather prominent below 
and receding above — so ; his eye just clearly discernible under a 
heavy straight eyebrow — so ; and his nose almost monstrous in size 
and the expression of his face rather forbidding than pleasing — so — 
so ! ” 

As I put the last touches with great rapidity to the picture and 
the individuality of Philemon Holland went into it as mysteriously 
as unmistakably, the sweet girl held her breath and looked at it in 
open-eyed amazement ; until, a suspicion of some deception on my 
part having entered her mind, which I detected in the expression of 
her face, she burst out in a glee of mental and emotional excitement, 
“ Oh, Jane, Jane, you have seen and studied his photograph — you 
have found it here since you came, or that Meddlesome Matty, Tilly 
Sanderson, that just left the room when I came, has given it to you. 
The only person about the house that she doesn’t know more about 
than he does himself is Nickie Corker ; and he is simply a hollow 
statue of obedience to orders and precision made out of Scotch pig- 
iron of whom there is absolutely nothing to be known but his ex- 
terior. And now that I come to think of Tilly, I saw, when I en- 
tered the room, that you had something in your hand that might 
have been a photograph — something, at any rate, which you have 
concealed. Confess, Jane, and be hanged at once. She has given 


182 


JANE JANSEN. 


you his photograph ? ” 

“No, Grace; she has given me this letter from Robley, which, 
with your permission I will tear open and read to you ; for I doubt 
not you will be interested in it as much as I — or rather Grace, since 
I have surrendered Robley to you without any reservation, I give 
you his letter unopened and beg you to open and read it for yourself.” 

Grace took the letter, and, having kissed it, opened it and read — 

“ My Dear Queen-bee : — In accordance with your directions, I am 
at No. 19, Lincoln Place, East End, not more than a square and a 
half from you and Miss Grace, and await your further orders. 

Your unslaughtered drone, Robley.” 

“ Well, did I ever ! — Queen-bee and unslaughtered drone, you and 
Robley ! Well, no matter now ; I am too happy to care or consider 
what anybody thinks or says or writes. Robley is here ! Robley is 
here ! and Tilly Sanderson will die — positively die ! as she deserves 
to, as soon as she learns that I will not marry Philemon Holland 
after all the fuss there has been about it in the family for years, but 
a man she never heard a word of before — the meddlesome thing ! ” 


XXXYI. 

I then had a long conversation with Grace in which I gave her an 
account of my relations with Philemon from first to last, which ex- 
cited the keenest interest in her — especially that part of my story 
pertaining to my self-restraint after I had become in a great measure 
certain that her unknown plighted lover and Philemon Holland were 
the same. “ How could you think it and feel it for a month, and I 
in your company daily, without speaking to me about it ! I could 
not have borne it a minute ! And really and truly, Jane, ever since I 
met Robley and found that he was just as happy in my company as 
I in his, I would have exchanged places gladly with you, and given 
you Phil’s diamond ring, and all my worldly goods except the 
clothes on my back to boot ! ” she exclaimed in substance, in divers 
more or less connected sentences. 

We then arranged for a meeting in the evening, at which Robley 
and she were to come together first at half past eight o’clock in the 
front parlor and then adjourn to the back, and remain until eleven 
with closed doors, that Tilly Sanderson might die innumerable 
deaths passing and repassing in the lighted hall where she could not 
stoop to the keyhole without running an almost certain risk of being 
seen ; while Philemon and I were to meet at nine and have the sole 


JANE JANSEN. 


183 


and exclusive use of the front parlor until eleven. At that hour the 
parlors were to be thrown into one, and Robley and Philemon intro- 
duced to each other, and general congratulations indulged in until 
twelve. 

I wrote to Robley, telling him to present himself at the door of 
the Gregory mansion promptly at half past eight in the evening; 
while Grace penned the following characteristic note to Philemon — 

“ My Dear Phil (positively for the very last time) : — Since I saw 
you last, a month ago, the world has been turned completely upside 
down and whirled around about in such an extraordinary way that 
very few people know whether they are standing on their heads or 
their heels, or whether, when they a-wooing go, they will fall into 
the arms of their own sweethearts or others’. Among the few who 
have alighted on their feet and with all their senses about them are 
a certain Jane Jansen, the grandest woman of the globe without a 
single exception, and a very uncertain Grace Gregory, the under- 
signed. Now, this very evening at nine o’clock sharp, if you will come 
to Idavoll, the said Jane Jansen, in propria persona , in the front parlor, 
will be happy to explain to you fully and satisfactorily the causes 
which have effected the wonderful revolution and shaking up re- 
ferred to ; while the said Grace Gregory, the undersigned, in the 
back parlor, will endeavor to elucidate the confusion confounded or 
the confounded confusion to a man whom you know and most 
highly esteem but whom you have never met, Dr. Robley Benham. 

Yours, in haste and overflowing happiness, 

Grace Gregory. 

“ P. S. — Jane has been keeping your ring in her purse for ever so 
long. But whether or not she will wear it, you must find out to- 
night fbr yourself. G. G. 

“ N. b. — Beware of T. S. 

“ P. S. — Now that I have concluded, I find I have a world to write 
to you. It will keep, however, until we meet ; and I can talk a great 
deal faster than I can write. Ten thousand wishes for your welfare. 
Good-bye. G. G. 

“ N. B. — Beware of — I was going to add T, S., when I remembered 
that I told you above to look out for the Meddlesome Matty. But a 
double dose of caution will not hurt you. Do not even look at 
her. Yours, forever and ever — pardon me, I forgot again. Your 
friend. G. G.” 

The special meetings between Robley and Grace and Philemon 
and myself, and the general afterward of all the parties most inti- 
mately concerned in the exchange of partners, were happy in the ex- 
treme ; and when we parted at the front door to meet again in the 


184 


JANE JANSEN. 


morning, there was a mutual understanding among us expressed un- 
mistakably in our actions that in the most satisfactory manner we 
were betrothed, Robley and Grace, and Philemon and I, as our pe- 
culiarly supplemental natures had determined in the face of circum- 
stances which seemingly precluded the possibility. 

The next morning — But why go into the details of our happy 
daily life? Suffice it, that, during the month of October while I 
was the guest of Grace, the happy couples were together daily either 
as a crowd of four or as two separate and distinct companies of two 
— the latter as frequently as circumstances would permit. And be- 
sides visiting the several places of special interest in, around, and 
about the Greater Pittsburgh — Schenley Park, the Allegheny Conser- 
vatory, the Carnegie Library, the Court House, the Edgar Thomson 
Steel Works, and the like, we joined a party of Grace’s friends 
and neighbors and spent two days in steaming up and down the 
Monongahela River, and six in absorbing as much as our several 
beings could possibly, of the roar and the spray, the rush and 
the rainbow — the beautiful, the bewildering, and the overwhelming 
of Niagara. 


XXXVII. 

The six months that followed my return from Idavoll to the Heart 
of Appalachia were six months of unalloyed happiness. Robley 
and 1 were on the same terms as before, and planned and worked 
together and apart for the benefit of both, as if our lives were to be 
indefinitely in the future as they had been in the past, associated in- 
timately but separable any moment without any serious inconven- 
ience or loss to either. Betimes Grace and Philemon spent a week 
or a fortnight with us ; and after freely discussing our marriage, we 
concluded to have a double wedding on or about the middle of the 
following month of roses and orange-blossoms, June, at the house 
with which our happiness was identified severally and collectively, 
the Heart of Appalachia. We concluded further to make our 
homes on the mountain top, where the air and compulsory out-of- 
door exercise had proven so beneficial to all ; Philemon and I in the 
old inn, he to pour over his books and papers to his heart’s content 
and I to go on as heretofore, as I was accustomed and found it 
agreeable to do ; and Robley and Grace in a new house on Robley ’s 
tract of land, near the log-pile which proved to be the great turning 
point in his life, which was planned and erected and torn down on 


JANE JANSEN. 


185 


paper fifty times or more by the four of us together, before the first 
shovelful of earth was taken out of the excavation for the cellar. 
A fifth person, finally in midwinter, terminated our conflicting 
castle-building by his professional comprehension and skill, an elder 
brother of Philemon, Sylvester Holland, an architect of repute, who 
recently had come back from England to America, and opened an 
office in Pittsburgh ; and before the end of April, the foundation walls 
were erected of a beautiful stone mansion, in a quaint Danish style 
of architecture, which was christened Rosenborg by the architect 
from the wild roses which grew in great luxurious clumps here and 
there on either side of the turnpike in front of the house (the seeds 
of which having followed the course of Empire from the east, and 
the bushes now marking the miles advanced) — a name which sug- 
gested the style of architecture adopted, that of the Rosenborg Pal- 
ace in Copenhagen. From the success I had achieved in beautify- 
ing the surroundings of the Heart of Appalachia, however, the lay- 
ing out of the grounds around the new house was left to me. 

Grace and I had a great deal to do, moreover, of which our future 
husbands knew little and perhaps cared less, but which in our esti- 
mation was such an important part of the double ceremony to be 
performed, as to be essential. This was the making and fitting of 
our wedding garments, which, a month or more before they would 
be required, from designs made by myself from a study of the old 
Greek costumes, were completed by the assistance of my dear aunt 
on the mountain at one end of the line of our uninterrupted com- 
munication and Tilly Sanderson at the other — the irrepressible T. S., 
who happily was as proficient in cutting and fitting as in meddling 
and gossiping, and w r as taken into the confidence of Grace and for- 
given ten thousand times in the course of the construction of her 
wedding-gown. 

Grace also took charge of old Graddy Beazley and Pete. A some- 
what better cabin was given her on the Rosenborg tract than that in 
which Grace and Robley had found her, and suitable employment, 
by which she could earn a comfortable living, was given her in the 
partial care of Robley’s flocks of pure-blooded fowls; while Pete 
was taken by the enthusiastic girl to Pittsburgh and installed nomi- 
nally as one of the domestics of the Gregory family, while in fact he 
was fed and clothed and sent to school out of Grace’s very liberal 
allowance by her indulgent father, who, in the social world in which 
Mrs. Archibald Gregory and her daughter moved, had no existence 
save as a satellite behind the disc of a planet, but who in the busi- 
ness world of Pittsburgh was the planet, and became luminous in 

X 


186 


JANE JANSEN. 


the* eyes of all the instant the name of Gregory was associated with 
money, while his wife and daughter were satellites in obscurity. 


XXXVIII. 

In the meantime severally and collectively, Robley and Grace and 
Philemon and I, had considered and accepted an invitation of Syl- 
vester Holland to spend a fortnight preceding our marriage at the 
Club House on the bank of the beautiful artificial tarn, Lake Cone- 
maugh, of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, of which he 
was a member. Grace had been the guest of another member on a 
former occasion ; and from her enthusiastic description of the de- 
lightfully secluded summer retreat — however chaotic with respect to 
circumstances — the rest of us were filled with anticipatory fancies of 
happiness secondary only to those of our honeymoon. 

It was agreed and determined on among us that Sylvester should 
be at the Club House — or Rhododendron Cottage preferably, which 
he expected to secure from a particular friend who owned it individ- 
ually — and have everything in readiness for our reception, not later 
than Wednesday, the 29th day of May, 1889 ; that Robley and I 
should take our two-horse carriages and Congo across the twenty-five 
or thirty miles of intervening country on that or the following 
day, and on Friday, the 31st, at South Fork, a station on the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, about two miles north of the lake, meet 
Grace and Philemon who would come from Pittsburgh thither on 
the Mail ; and that, on the termination of our visit, we would come 
together in the carriages to the Heart of Appalachia where the cere- 
mony of marriage would take place on Friday, the 21st of June. 

Accordingly, in the early morning of Wednesday, Robley and I, 
in his carriage, and Congo and our baggage in mine, set out in a 
heavy rain; and some time late in the afternoon, having been 
obliged by the sloppy and muddy condition of the road to walk our 
horses almost the whole of the way, and having been stopped for 
several minutes repeatedly to bridge impassable wash-outs with rails 
and drift-wood, we arrived at Lake Conemaugh and were received 
and housed most comfortably in Rhododendron Cottage— to which, 
happily, convenient stables and sheds for our horses and carriages 
were attached. 

The following day being Decoration or Memorial Day, and the 
continuity of rainy weather for the past several days seemingly hav- 
ing come to an end, Robley, Sylvester, and I, with Congo driving, 


JANE JANSEN. 


187 


went to Johnstown, a distance of eleven or twelve miles over the 
hills by way of the Frankstown Road, to see the parade and hear the 
address of the distinguished orator of the day, Colonel W. D. Moore, 
of Pittsburgh ; and especially to give Congo a day of inexpressible 
delight in staring at the procession of soldiers and children with 
flags and flowers, marching alternately to the music of horn and cym- 
bal, and fife and drum. The city was decorated lavishly with flags 
and streamers, and the streets were thronged with thousands in holi- 
day attire — many strangers and a great part of the people of 
Johnstown and the half a score of contiguous and neighboring bor- 
oughs, which together would make a city of thirty thousand in the 
narrow valleys of the Conemaugh and its confluent Stony Creek. 
The day was cheery and bright and the air exhilarating after the 
gloom and rain and depression of the past week ; every feature of 
the programme was carried out happily ; and one and all, when not 
held in check reverently by the character of the ceremonies, were 
filled with gladness and mirth : the great Iron City of the Alle- 
ghanies of yesterday, with the smoke of its many furnaces com- 
mingling with and intensifying the blackness of the overhanging 
clouds, and the rumble and roar of its myriad of wheels continuing 
indefinitely the sullen reverberations of the thunder, while the flash 
and flame of its converters and chimneys mimicked the darting light- 
ning, being transmuted into a City of Gold in the gleam of the sun, 
where flags floated languidly in an atmosphere perfumed with the 
breath of flowers and vibrating with that concord of sweetest 
sounds compounding the music of instruments and the voices of 
children, and where men and women, forgetting their cares and anx- 
ieties, their sorrows and woes, and their struggles and strife, 
united in joy and peace to place a crown of the fairest flowers on 
the ghastly skull of Death ! 

We had supper at the Hulbert House ; and after a half hour’s chat 
with a number of friends whom I met in the hotel, we set out on 
our return to Rhododendron Cottage— -Congo and his varied happy 
experiences during the day being the theme of our discourse until we 
arrived at Lake Conemaugh ; while interjectionally Robley and I were 
the target of innumerable shafts of facetiousness and good-natured 
satire from the seemingly inexhaustible quiver of Sylvester— the 
harmless venom of their points being the heavy hearts of separated 
lovers and the light of confirmed old maids and bachelors, and the 
difference in the speed of time when laden with the lead of love and 
the thistle-seeds of single-blessedness. 


188 


JANE JANSEN. 


XXXIX. 

The day of happy sights and sounds was followed by a night 
of blissful dreams. 

But howsoever sweetly I slept and blissfully dreamed in the cosy 
cottage, the storm clouds gathered soon after I went to bed and the 
rain descended in unprecedented torrents during the remainder of 
the night. 

When I arose at seven, a general gloom prevailed — the air being 
oppressive, the clouds hanging low and threatening, and the rain 
falling incessantly in heavy showers alternating with light drippings 
and drizzle. 

At breakfast, Sylvester received a report from the telegraph opera- 
tor at the Club House that the wires between Johnstown and South 
Fork were in a chaotic condition and that wash-outs had occurred 
which in all probability would delay all trains going east or west for 
several hours. The extent of the injury done to the road-bed, how- 
ever, was in a great measure conjectural from the meagre details he 
had received. 

In the comfort and security of our cottage, Robley, Sylvester, and 
I were not inclined to put the worst construction on the report of 
the telegrapher ; on the contrary, we believed that the great Penn- 
sylvania Railroad Company would soon repair the road-bed and tel- 
egraph system, with its almost unlimited means at hand at Cone- 
maugh Station, and that the Mail with Grace and Philemon aboard, 
would arrive at South Fork an hour behind time — or perhaps, a half 
hour less or more. 

The carriages w T ere ordered ; and in due time to meet the train 
should it come as scheduled, we set out in a gleeful defiance of the 
opposition of the elements to the carrying out of our plans. 

Our road lay for a mile perhaps along the northwest shore of the 
artificial lake — which was about three miles in length running north 
and south and from a quarter of a mile to three quarters in width, 
covering at high water from seven to eight hundred acres at an aver- 
age depth of twenty feet — to the dam ; thence, along the top of the 
dam, which was wide enough possibly to permit the passing of car- 
riages, a distance of 500 feet to the eastern shore of the lake ; thence, 
across a bridge over a wide race by which the overflowing waters of 
the lake were discharged, to a fairly good country road which follow- 
ed the right or eastern bank of the South Fork to its junction with 
the Conemaugh at South Fork Station, a distance of two or two and 
a half miles. 


JANE JANSEN. 


189 


In crossing the dam, our horses became frightened and fretful ; 
and well they might, for the steep slope of the earthen dam was 
on our left, a veritable precipice of a really dangerous steepness for 
a hundred and fifty feet or more to the original bed of the mountain 
stream ; and a rushing turbid flood was on our right eddying along 
the riprapped inner face of the dam toward the escape or spill at 
the eastern end of the dam, carrying on its surface a great quantity 
of drift-wood — rails, logs, roots, and branches and trunks of trees, 
and rapidly rising to a point which threatened the destruction of the 
dam by overflowing the top and cutting down through the riprap to 
the clay embankment, which, in a few minutes by the enormous 
pressure above and behind, would become deliquescent and melt into 
and add its weight to the momentum of the liberated flood. Unfor- 
tunately, too, Robley’s span was in front ; and never having been 
over the dam before, like mine in going to and coming from Johns- 
town the day before, they were in a strange place under terrifying 
circumstances and became almost unmanageable, while mine re- 
mained quiet, until catching the contagion of fear from those in front 
of them, they became so nervous as to render an attempt to pass 
Robley’s carriage and take the lead a foolhardy risk. With the ex- 
ercise of patience, calmness, and the consummate horsemanship 
which Robley possessed, however, he got over the dam, and was con- 
fronted by a more exciting but less dangerous difficulty in crossing 
the bridge over the furiously running spill. Here a number of men 
were assembled as workers and sight-seers — the former, under the di- 
rection of Colonel Elias J. Unger, the President of the South Fork 
Fishing and Hunting Club, and Mr. John G. Parke, a civil engineer 
from Philadelphia, removing the drift-wood as fast as it accumu- 
lated in the race and threatened the rupture of the wire netting 
stretched across to cut off the escape of the trout and bass and other 
fish with which the lake was stocked, and in enlarging the race to 
accommodate safely the unusual rush of water. Robley’s horses 
plunged and reared, and, suddenly wheeling snapped the pole of the 
carriage. They were unhitched then ; and during an ordered sus- 
pension of the hurrying and hurrahing for a moment, were led by 
two strong men at the bridle of each horse, across the bridge to a 
place beyond the terrifying influences of the flood, while a number 
of the sight-seers followed dragging the carriage. With Congo hold- 
ing the lines of my horses, they partook more or less of his firm- 
ness, and went across the bridge prancing and snorting but obedient 
to the bit ; and Sylvester and I were soon in consultation with Robljby 
with respect to the propriety of leaving his carriage, and two or thitee 
of us who might be spared, behind, and either Robley, or Congo and 


190 


JANE JANSEN. 


I, go in mine to South Fork and receive our two friends. 

But the pole could be spliced securely in a little time and that de- 
termined the matter. A little more time was lost, however, in doing 
this and in doing that; and greatly to the surprise of all it was 
noon when we reached South Fork. 

Here we learned that the destruction of the road-bed of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad, between South Fork and Johnstown, was such as 
to preclude the possibility of any train coming from the west before 
the following day. We concluded, then, that Grace and Philemon 
had gotten off the Mail at Johnstown and doubtless then were sitting 
down at the dining table of the Hulbert, the Merchants, the Man- 
sion, or other of the hotels of Johnstown, comforting each other in 
their common disappointment with cheery words, between bites of 
savory roast beef and sips of fragrant tea or coffee. 

At the suggestion of food and drink, we thought of ourselves and 
horses ; and having driven to the Bald Eagle Hotel just across the 
railroad from the station, we soon were engaged in satisfying the best 
of appetites with a little of everything on the table — fried ham, 
mashed potatoes, home-made bread, seven kinds of jellies and jams, 
two of pickles, dried-elderberry pie, and milk and egg custard, with 
butter which Sylvester remarked was more than a match for Corpo- 
ral Hunger and Colonel Unger together, and coffee that certainly had 
been out all night and morning in the rain. Betimes, too, like 
everybody within ear-shot from the time we came across the dam of 
the artificial lake, we discussed the probabilities of its breaking or 
dissolving and the amount of damage the flood would cause in de- 
scending the narrow populous valley ; but Robley and I regarded as 
conclusive the dicta of Sylvester, and were as free from apprehension 
as he, who not only was a member of the club and one of the own- 
ers of the dam, and presumably familiar with its construction and 
strength, but an architect of vast and varied experience in building 
almost every kind of structure, with the exception of railroad em- 
bankments and reservoir dams. 

“ Bosh ! bosh ! ” he repeatedly said ; “ the dam has stood the 
floods of the past seventeen years, and it certainly will the present — 
and would even without the relief afforded by the enlargement of 
the spill which is going on now with an ample force under the di- 
rection of a competent engineer. And as to the damage which could 
or would follow the bursting of the dam — that certainly would be 
considerable to the Pennsylvania Railroad which is flooded and 
undermined now at several places in its course along the Conemaugh 
between this point and Johnstown; but with the exception of a 
shanty or shed floated away here and there, that would be the sum 


JANE JANSEN. 


191 


total of destruction. The distance between the crest of the dam, 
following all the crooks and bends of the South Fork and Cone- 
maugh, to the Stone Bridge at the lower or western end of Johns- 
town, is fifteen or sixteen miles ; and were all the waters of Lake 
Conemaugh to be discharged at once, which of course is a physical 
impossibility, they would be impeded and attenuated by the rocky 
and tortuous character of these mountain valleys to such an extent 
as to distribute and diminish correspondingly their powers of de- 
struction to a point barely beyond the possibility of danger to 
human life and scarcely worth a moment’s serious consideration. In 
the city of Johnstown, the rise of water would be from three to five 
feet above the high-water mark of 1887 ; sufficient to flood the cel- 
lars of the houses in the valley proper, and necessitate the re- 
moval of household goods from the first to the second floor in many 
instances, and suspend traffic in the streets for a while — but nothing 
more. I dare say,” said the confident man, as he moistened a bite 
of the dried- elderberry pie with a sip of the flooded coffee, and 
cleared his mouth and throat fora final utterance — “I dare say the 
number of rats killed by the flooding of all the cellars of the city, 
will repay indirectly all the damage the owners of the houses or the 
city at large will sustain. Now, let us return to Rhododendron Cot- 
tage and await the reconstruction of the telegraph lines and the 
road-bed of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which will be, I do not 
doubt, not later than to-morrow morning, when we can come back 
and welcome our wandering friends as affectionately as we can — in 
public, or while Congo and I, in the goodness of our hearts, will 
look only at each other and wink with one and the other eye at 
what is going on on our right and left. All aboard for Lake Cone- 
maugh ! ” 

At the crossing of the road on which we were traveling and the 
Frankstown Road, a quarter of a mile or so below the dam, we found 
a boy on a horse awaiting us with a message, directed to Sylvester 
Holland. 

“ Grace and I are storm-stayed at the Merchants Hotel in Johns- 
town. The backwater from the overflowing Stony Creek and Cone- 
maugh has flooded already the lower part of the city and is approach- 
ing the high-water mark of June 7th, 1887. Many are apprehensive 
lest the Fishing Club’s dam break at this critical juncture and actually 
submerge to the second and third floors the houses which are flood- 
ed now to the first ; while others, and vastly the majority, either 
poohpooh the idea of all the waters in the fish-pond affecting mater /, 
ially the flood at this great distance, or simply say they have hear en 
the cry of wolf! wolf! so often in the past fifteen or eighteen ye-des 


192 


JANE JANSEN. 


that they have ceased to regard it. I myself believe there is grave 
danger, especially to the sick and the variously hampered in the very 
course the flood necessarily must come; while the free-footed, 
of course, at the first alarm can flee to a place of safety on the 
mountain steeps on each side of the narrow valley. I conceal my 
apprehensions from Grace as well as I can ; but she has caught from 
others the contagion of anxiety and fear, and looks down from the 
window of the hotel on the flittings from the lower part of the city 
with great distress depicted on her countenance for the poor people 
who are obliged to remove their household effects through the rain 
and mud to higher ground ; and watches with increasing uneasiness 
the advance of the waters up Main Street; and just now while I 
write has reported to me that the flood has passed the corner of 
Clinton Street and reached a point perhaps a third of the distance 
from there to the turn of the Frankstown Road into the head of 
Main Street at the foot of the mountain. If possible, accordingly, 
let Congo come in Jane’s carriage and take us to Rhododendron Cot- 
tage this afternoon. The water will not be so deep — unless the dam 
should burst before he gets here — that he cannot ford the street to 
the door of the hotel. Howsoever, we shall look for his coming down 
the street and hail him before he can run any risk of flooding the . 
carriage ; and if we cannot get to him in any other way, I will beg 
Grace to close her eyes and imagine I am Robley while I wade or 
swim and carry her high and dry above my head. With love to 
Robley from Grace and to Jane from myself, I remain, 

Your brother, * Philemon. 

“Johnstown, Pa., Friday, 31st May, 1889, 12 : 15, p. m.” 

On reading this letter aloud, Sylvester blanched ; and, admitting 
the danger might be greater than he apprehended, he suggested that 
since we were on the road all together we continue to Johnstown 
and relieve Grace and Philemon as speedily as possible. At the 
same time we heard a man above us cry out to another that the 
water was beginning to flow over the top of the dam ; and without 
replying to the suggestion or remarking the significant shout, I di- 
rected Congo to turn into the Frankstown Road ; and away we went 
over the iron bridge, with the turbid waters from the spill of the dam 
tumultuously rushing and roaring beneath us, and across the half- 
submerged lowlands and up the torrent-swept and gully-cut hillside 
beyond, as rapidly as we could consistently with safety : Sylvester 
and I, with Congo driving, in my carriage, and Robley alone behind 
; n his. 

k As we crossed the bridge, Sylvester looked at his watch, and heav- 
s *-g a sigh of relief from his momentary alarm and anxiety, said, in 


JANE JANSEN. 


193 


a satisfied tone, “ It is now exactly twenty-nine and a half minutes 
after two. The distance from the bridge to the head of Main Street 
is from eight to nine miles; we can cover it, allowing a reasonable 
time for sn ailing over and around wash-outs and up and down the 
steepest parts of the road, ait the rate of six miles an hour, and ar- 
rive at the Merchants Hotel not later than four o’clock. The dis- 
tance from this bridge by the tortuous course the waters will be 
obliged to flow to the same place in Johnstown is from fifteen to six- 
teen miles. Now, supposing the dam should melt at this instant, 
and the flood descend : at first, undoubtedly, it would go as fast or 
faster than a horse could run ; but gradually as it spread and mingled 
with the waters in the valleys, it , would slacken its speed* until I 
dare say, when it met the backwater in Johnstown, it would go no 
faster than a horse can walk. On an average, it will go no faster 
than ourselves* and arrive at the Merchants an hour and a quarter 
after us, or about the time we shall have returned. But the dam has 
not melted away, and it never will until two Sundays meet — when 
an infinitely greater downpour than this shall occur and the reliev- 
ing race be permitted by Colonel Unger or his successor in office to 
become clogged and absolutely closed with drift-wood.” 

As we descended the hill, down which the Frankstown Road runs 
obliquely to the head of Main Street, Sylvester looked at his watch 
again and remarked, “Thirteen minutes of four. We shall arrive 
on time; and the threatened flood behind us is neither in sight nor 
hearing.” 

He doubtless would have continued in the same strain indefi- 
nitely had not the sight of the number of refugees on the roadsidf 
from the partly submerged city beneath us, suggested again to hii 
not only the possibility but the probability of his minimizing co' 
stantly the danger to the vast population of the Valley of the Cor 
maugh, of which he, as a member of the South Fork Fishing a 
Hunting Club, was in part the cause. 

I was impressed greatly by what I saw beside me on the road 
beneath me in the dark and gloomy gorge in which the surfac, 
the Conemaugh River and its overflowing waters was discernibl 
many places, and the rush of the torrent was imagined if not h 
in the confusion of sounds that arose from the valley. 

Suddenly I espied poor old Papa Pearlesteine with his pack l 
ing down the road toward the city ; and having directed Co f 
stop his horses — which brought Robley’s to a standstill behin 
I called the good old man and bade him get into Robley’s \ 
and we would take him as far on his way as the Merchants 

Y 


194 


JANE JANSEN. 


The old man turned in his headlong course, and approaching the 
side of the carriage, implored me, with tears streaming from his eyes, 
not to go a step farther. “ I am on my way from the Conemaugh 
Lake as rapidly as my legs will carry me. The dam will burst be- 
fore night ; and the sea of w r aters suspended there, nearly five hun- 
dred feet above the streets of the city of Johnstown, will come thun- 
dering down upon it like another Niagara, combined with a moun- 
tain avalanche of all the rocks and rubbish it can gather in the 
valley, and sweep all in its irresistible course ! Oh, my daughter, 
my daughter ! go back ! go back ! It matters little if I descend into 
the Valley of Death : I am on the brink of the grave in my old age 
at best, and save yourself, without a friend in the world ; but you, 
my daughter — you are on the threshold of the only palace of en- 
chantment the world has ever seen in reality, the palace of love in 
the fullness of life ; and if you would enter and abide there in 
health and happiness, go not now, I beseech you, my dear daughter, 
into the city beneath us — into the course of the resistless flood com- 
ing behind us with the certainty of death ! ” 

The appeal of the good old man was from his heart ; and howso- 
ever greatly he magnified the effect of the bursting of the darn in 
my opinion which reflected in a great measure that of Sylvester, it 
had the effect of alarming me to a point of mental and emotional 
agitation. I restrained myself, how r ever, and replied to the old man 
i'U a way I had become accustomed from our many years of intimate 
acquaintance ; for from the time he "became by chance the first guest 
of the Heart of Appalachia, he was perhaps the most frequent and 
he most happily entertained visitor. 

I told him the occasion of our visit to Johnstown ; and assuring 
m that we would remain in the threatened city not a moment lon- 
r than was absolutely necessary to go from the foot of the hill to 
) door of the Merchants Hotel and return, he smiled through his 
"8 and got into Robley’s carriage. 

l /e were delayed by this encounter perhaps five minutes ; and the 
n clock in the belfry of the Lutheran Church was sounding the 
* of four when we descended the last hundred yards of the 
kstown Road and entered the Main Street of Johnstown, 
a minute more we were stopped by a throng of people at 
Ige of the water in the street — some excited and others list- 
curious. “ Will you please make way for us,” I cried out in a 
ut kindly tone ; and as the crowd parted, a young woman in 
istress approached the carriage and begged me to take her in 
iage to her home, which she could not reach afoot on account 
r ater ; adding to her request as rapidly as she could speak, 


JANE JANSEN. 


195 


“ J ust down Adams Street here, and around the corner. It will de- 
lay you but a minute. *Please do. Do not turn ; I will climb up 
over the wheel and sit down by your driver that I may show him 
the w r ay.” 

And before I could deny or check the young woman, she had 
mounted the wheel and seated herself beside Congo ; whereupon 
Sylvester, rising from his seat and stepping down from the carriage, 
said, u It is all right, Jane. Take the poor girl home, and* return to 
this spot. Robley and I will go to the hotel and bring the storm- 
stayed here, when you can take Philemon and we will keep Grace — 
and Papa Pearlesteine, too, if he will ; for there is something in that 
old man that would be a bond of strong attachment between us — 
his open-hearted fatherly love for you, Jane.” 

As the horses started, I turned and saw Sylvester, with one foot on 
the step of Robley’s carriage, shaking hands with Papa Pearlesteine 
sitting on the back seat: looking each into the other’s eyes and 
smiling. 

Turning to the left, and going a short distance in one direction 
and a short distance in another, we entered a part of the city I had 
never been in before ; but at the farthest we were only a few hun- 
dred yards from the Main Street of the city and the Merchants Ho- 
tel, and I felt no uneasiness on that score — nor on account of the 
water which barely rose to the knees of the horses. 

Startled by the report of a gun, I looked in the direction of the 
sound, and saw an old man sitting at a window, with a rifle in his 
hands, and his face radiant with smiles. “ That makes nineteen rats 
and two moles since dinner ! ” I heard him call out to somebody in 
the house. “ One more rat and then I’ll quit, if you say so, and 
take up the parlor carpet.” And I recollected Sylvester’s remark 
about the slaughter of the rats repaying indirectly any damage that 
might be done by the bursting of the Fishing Club’s dam. 

I saw also a number of children playing in the water in the street 
with a big dog hitched to a floating door. A youngster of two or 
three sat on the raft ; while a boy of ten with his pantaloons rolled 
up high on his thighs led the dog, and four others, from eight to 
twelve perhaps, followed laughing behind, splashing the water, mak- 
ing waves to rock the floating door to terrify the youngster. 

I heard a man playing on the violin, after the fashion of a moun- 
tain fiddler, “ The Arkansaw Traveler,” and call out as if he were 
playing for a rural ball, “ Ladies to the right ! ” 

A few seconds afterward, a shrill whistle sounded up the valley, 
followed by another, and a third in rapid succession. Startled men 
and women appeared at the doors and windows on both sides 


196 


JANE JANSEN. 


of the street. “ There’s something up!” cried one; A Fire ! ” 
screamed another ; while “ I believe the dam has burst! ” exclaimed 
a third. 

“ Oh, hurry, hurry, please ! ” cried the girl on the front seat with 
Congo ; and responsive to the increasing excitement around them as 
well as a touch of the whip, the horses dashed through the water, 
which, either by a descent in the street, or a rise of the flood, sud- 
denly rose above the floor of the carriage and wet my feet. 

“ Stop ! stop ! that is the house — that with the stoop and the open 
front door! Follow me up stairs; and if the dam has burst we shall 
not be in danger : we are too far out of the course of the Conemaugh 
here. Oh, how can I thank you enough for bringing me to a place 
of safety ! Quick ! quick ! follow me, both of you, and let the 
horses go! ” and at a bound the excited girl leaped from the front 
wheel of the carriage to the porch, the edge of which was under 
water, and bounded through the open door of a. compactly built 
dwelling of wood, with low ceilings and rooms on each side of a cen- 
tral hall, that stood on the eastern side of the street. 

As nearly as I could tell from my limited knowledge of Johns- 
town, 1 was on Bedford Street, and whether or not I could gallop 
thence to Green Hill and secure a place of absolute safety I did not 
know, and I saw no street running in the direction of the hill. I had 
little time, however, to consider what to do; for as I rose from my 
seat I heard an appalling roar descending the valley and a succes- 
sion of crashes that convinced me that Lake Conemaugh in reality 
had burst its bounds and was rushing down upon the city more in 
accordance with the predictions of poor old Papa Pearlesteine than 
the astute and able architect, Sylvester Holland. 

“ Unhitch the horses, Congo ; give the noble animals a chance at 
least for their lives. No; never mind the traces — take out your 
knife and go to their heads. Now, cut the pole-straps, the hame- 
strings, and the throat-latches of the bridles. You still have time to 
pull off their bridles. Now, let them go with their collars, and 
follow me.” 

The carriage being more on the sidewalk than in the street, I read- 
ily stepped to the porch and entered the open door. The stairs were 
in front of me, and I ran up them hurriedly. At the landing on the 
second floor, there were several doors ajar leading into as many dif- 
ferent rooms ; and hearing a succession of screams issuing from one 
of the front chambers, I entered it and found a frightened parrot at- 
tached by a small chain to a tin perch, uttering cries so like those of 
a human being in alarm and distress that I was deceived com- 
pletely— and amused at the deception to such an extent, that, while 


JANE JANSEN. 


197 


I broke the bird’s chain, I chatted to it cheerily for a moment. 

While doing so, I heard Congo pass my door and ascend the 
stairs to the attic. The din of the flood then attracting my atten- 
tion, I went to a window facing the sound and looked out. 

I saw the rounded and ragged point of a great wedge of water, 
bearing upon it a toppling mass of trees and houses and railroad 
cars, parting the city in twain in front of me beneath a cloud of dust 
and spray, and leaving in its widening wake a great flattened area in 
which a few large houses and churches stood immovable while other 
large and small houses tumbled together and rolled over and fell to 
pieces in a conglomeration of floating objects which seemed to com- 
prise every structural thing made by man from a railroad bridge to 
a cradle : and here and there in the midst of the wreckage scores of 
horses mid hundreds of human beings — men, women, and children 
— the dead floating as calmly as the drift-wood around them and the 
living in as many phases of an agonizing struggle for existence in the 
awful cauldron of angry waters as there were individuals. 

A moment later, the point of the great water-wedge had passed 
me on its way across Stony Creek and the lower end of Kernville to 
strike against the mountain beyond lying approximately at right 
angles to the course of. the flood ; and I saw the rolling side of the 
great wedge obliquely coming toward me, crushing and leveling 
brick houses and lifting up and tossing about frame buildings as the 
point of the wedge had done. I was transfixed by the overwhelm- 
ing character of the rapidly approaching engine of destruction. I 
felt, without moving a muscle, the extreme outer fringe of the wave 
strike the foundation of the house I was in. I heard the rush of 
waters into the doors and windows below and the lap of the waves 
against the ceilings. I saw my own carriage rise in front of the win- 
dow before me. I felt the waters rush around me and carry me up 
_ U p — wildly clinging to a floating bureau, and knocking now against 
the bedstead and now against some other article of furniture adrift, 
until I passed above the top of the windows, when, in the awful 
darkness that followed immediately after, I found a difficulty in 
breathing the compressed air near the ceiling that affected me more 
than my recognition of my inevitable fate by drowning should the 
water rise in the room but an inch or two more. Happily, in a few 
minutes, the ceiling was broken in several places, by the bureau and 
bedstead knocking against it, and the pressure of the air was re- 
duced ; and as the air rushed through the holes and cracks respon- 
sively to the movements of the water in the room, the house seemed 
to sigh like a sentient suffering being like myself and the poor par- 
rot that clung to the bedstead as I to the bureau. 


198 


JANE JANSEN. 


At length, as I was about to sink from exhaustion, the chimney of 
the side of the house on which I was, came down with such a crash 
and splash that I thought the house had been crushed in a jam and 
that I could live but a moment longer. A great part of the bricks 
and mortar broke through the weather-boarding of the house and 
lightened it proportionately ; and at the same time the opening of 
the chimney appeared and the light of day entered the awful dun- 
geon in which I was drowning, the house rocked, and the distance 
increased a foot or more between my head and the ceiling. 

The parrot fluttered to the opening, and, vainly endeavoring to 
rise from the water, screamed. 

A huge black hand and arm, which I recognized as Congo’s, per- 
haps with the most joyous heart-beat of my existence, descended to 
the surface of the water and lifted the bird to the floor of the attic 
above, whence it flew immediately through the chimney opening in 
the roof. 

An instant afterward, I was under the opening, screaming like the 
parrot ; and another instant later, I was tottering with the weight of 
muddy water in my hair and clothing, by the side of Congo, whose 
clothing above his waist still was as dry as when he came from the 
street, but whose eyes were- streaming with tears. 

While wringing the water out of my hair, to relieve my head and 
neck of the disagreeable weight, I looked around for the girl who 
had preceded us up the stairs ; and seeing nobody but Congo and 
myself in the garret, I uttered a moan of horror and anguish as I 
realized that she and her friends must be confined and drowning 
in one of the inaccessible rooms beneath us ! 

And here I first realized that the house was afloat — that, in fact, it 
had a double motion : a slow rotation and a rapid onward move- 
ment ; and looking out of the great opening in the gable made by 
the falling chimney, I saw that the one motion came from an eddy- 
ing along the southern margin of the great wedge of waters which 
had split and flattened the southern side of Johnstown, and that the 
other was that of the great torrent in its direct course east and west 
from the southern side of the upper part of Johnstown to and over 
the lower part of Kernville above and below the iron bridge which 
connected the two towns, and with which I was familiar, as it 
formed part of the wav from the Heart of Appalachia to the busi- 
ness centre of Johnstown. 

Looking backward or eastward, I saw that the Hulbert House and 
a great part of the Merchants Hotel, and almost all the buildings in 
that neighborhood were gone, while the great stone Methodist 
Church, Alma Hall, and several other buildings stood like fantastic 


JANE JANSEN. 


199 


islands in a sea of wreckage. 

Looking northward, I saw that a great division of the flood had 
followed the course of the Conemaugh along the northern side of 
Johnstown, sweeping away almost every structural impediment in 
its course, and piling up a great hill of wreckage against the moun- 
tain side opposite the rather short bend of the river to the northwest 
toward the Stone Bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the bor- 
oughs of Cambria City and Morrellville lying immediately below. 
This hill of wreckage extended to the Stone Bridge, where seemingly 
it had clogged the channel, and with the railroad embankment east 
of the bridge, made a dam which was holding back and accumulat- 
ing the vast volumes of water which were rushing still through and 
over Johnstown in a furiously chaotic sea, in which great floating 
buildings were jostled and jammed and crushed and broken into 
shapeless masses and fragments as if they had been made of paper 
and glass. Presently I discerned a kind of order evolve from this 
colossal confusion ; for as the confined and accumulating floods beat 
back from the mountain side, the Stone Bridge, and the railroad em- 
bankment, over Johnstown, the line of least resistance lay southward 
up the valley of Stony Creek, toward the point where the direct or 
southern division of the flood — in which I was — already had struck 
the mountain side west of the northern or lower part of Kernville 
and was then in a violent condition of reaction. I saw this great 
current from the Stone Bridge take shape and come directly toward 
me. I felt the waters swelling beneath me as if they were rising in 
the might of a great submerged monster to resist to the last an over- 
whelming onslaught ; and realizing that we would be safer on the 
roof than in the attic or garret of the house in the inevitable crash 
in a few minutes, we got out on the shingle roof through the chim- 
ney opening, and, clinging to the sides of this opening which afford- 
ed a more secure hold than the edge or comb of the roof, awaited the 
collision. And scarcely had we taken a firm hold when the two 
great divisions of the imprisoned flood came together; and houses 
crushed one another which had been erected many squares apart — 
if not, indeed, two or three miles. As crash upon crash came in be- 
wildering rapidity around us, I heard shouts and groans issue from '■ 
hundreds of people, few of whom happily were seen in their seem- 
ingly hopeless struggle to retain unquenched the spark of life amid 
the overwhelming waves ; but wherever and whenever beheld, they 
had a uniform aspect to me, a white-faced agony dotting the ghastly 
greys and browns and blacks with which the endless succession of 
awful pictures on which I gazed had been painted by a gigantic 
hand in a frenzy of murderous wrath. 


200 


JANE JANSEN. 


The house collapsed beneath us. The sides of the roof came to- 
gether and rose vertically in the air. Our holds were firm, however; 
and when the side to which we clung descended we were carried 
with it down beneath the surface of the flood, and churned up and 
down and around and about until I was barely conscious that I was 
alive — no longer clinging to the roof, but tightly held around the 
waist by the strong left arm of Congo, while he held to the roof 
with his right, where he had caught it first. 

In a little while the roof settled with the shingles down and the 
rafters up, and we were able to climb and stand upon it without 
difficulty, and cling to it, if necessary, much more easily than before. 

And again I began to wring the water from my hair, which pulled 
my head backward and seriously disturbed my perceptive faculties 
by the discomfort it gave me ; and while doing so, I discovered with 
a sickening sense of disgust that my hair and clothing were saturated 
as well with carbon oil or petroleum as muddy water. In the collis- 
ion, evidently, a great quantity of oil had been liberated, and this 
rising to the surface of the water, I was involved in it and polluted 
with it from head to foot. 

At the same time — the stench of the oil having restored my senses 
of hearing and seeing as well as smelling- — I was impressed with 
the stillness of death that had succeeded the terrific din of the 
meeting of the great currents and the crushing of the buildings 
borne by them and the shrieking and groaning of the imprisoned 
human beings; and looking around me, I saw that almost all 
the houses had been flattened into floating fragments as ours 
had been, and were drifting southward up the valley of Stony 
Creek over that part of Kernville which had been built along the 
lowest level of the valley. I saw, moreover, that our raft was float- 
ing in a body of water remarkably free from wreckage and compara- 
tively smooth ; and it was not long before I discovered the cause. 
We were in the wake of the Unique Rink of Kernville, the largest 
and most substantially built of the frame buildings of Johnstown or 
any of its flooded suburbs. On went the colossal ark in the mighty 
maelstrom of Kernville, crushing everything in its way and scatter- 
ing the wreckage far and wide on each side, drowning scores upon 
scores of men, women, and children, who until run down by this 
prodigious ram had hopes at least of saving their lives by the set- 
tling and subsidence of the flood which must come in the course of 
time ; and on went our raft in serene security behind ! 

I cast my eyes over the waters to the great fringe of wreckage 
along the western shore, and saw so many people rescuing and being 
rescued, I marveled whence they had come, for only the dead were 


JANE JANSEN. 


201 


floating around me; and I began not only to hope for an escape but 
to conceive a plan from what I saw going on along the shore. Cur- 
iously, too, as soon as I had determined what to do, Congo, perhaps 
from the same circumstances in sight, began to put it in execution, 
by taking a floating board and using it as a rudder to guide our raft 
into the first smooth harbor of safety we might encounter in our 
course. 

I espied a suitable haven and directed Congo to steer for it ; and 
as I did so, I began to feel my heart beat w r ith a reviving vigor. 

But the raft kept in the course of the current without a percepti- 
ble deviation ; and my heart sank as I divined the cause. We had 
no force — neither that of wind against sails nor arms at oars — to op- 
pose the propulsion of the eddying flood. 

By using the board as an oar or paddle, however, Congo was able 
to affect the movement of the raft to a slight extent ; and I again 
conceived a hope that he might push it gradually to the fringe of 
wreckage along the Kernville shore on our right. 

My eyes were fixed on the wreckage when a cry for help on my 
left startled me; and on turning my head I saw r a man leave a 
chicken-coop which had broken into pieces of lath beneath him and 
vainly attempt to secure a supporting hold on an empty oil barrel. 
I directed Congo to push the raft hack into the course of the cur- 
rent ; and with little difficulty, I pulled the struggling man aboard. 

He was a little old Ridger extremely uncouth in his appearance — 
with the expression of a monkey in his face, and such a stiffened 
crook in his right leg that he could walk on the raft only in a half- 
erect posture, which further increased his resemblance to an ape. 
He had been in the water evidently but a very short time ; for he 
was not exhausted in the least, and began to chatter cheerily before 
the muddy water had ceased to trickle from his shocky hair into his 
upturned face. 

“ I say— I dunno w’ut’s y’ur name, but I ’llow Cap’in ’ill ’bout 
kiver the ground — I say, Cap’in, be youens rayal flesh an’ blood ? ” 

“ Certainly, my good man ; why do you ask ? ” 

“ Well, w’en I see you fust a-comin’ fur me, an’ I see you a-stan’in’ 
up like one uv them thur marble statutes in a cimetry, an’ I see thet 
w’ite star uv yourn jes above y’ur forehead, I sez to myse’f, sez I, 
Chippy — thet’s w’ut all the Ridgers round hyur calls me — Chippy, 
short fur Chipmunk, you know— Chippy, sez I, thet’s a sperret uv 
light; an’ w’en I see thet thur Jim Dandy uv a big buck nigger 
a-pushin’ an’ a-shovin’ with thet thur board uv his’n, an’ I see them 
thur warts an’ scars —I never see the beat !— jes up an’ all over 

Z 


202 


JANE JANSEN. 


his face, sez I to myse’f, sez I, Chippy, thet’s a sperrit uv darkness ; 
an’ ef ary mossback’s to be yanked^out uv this hyur puddle an’ laid 
up somewhurs on a log to dry out like a tortle, it’ll be by youens who 
hev power Jbove an’ below. I say Cap’in-— it comes nayteral to call 
you Cap’n, fiir, you see, Cap’in, w’en I wuz a so year ol — jes about 
knee-high to one uv them thur hoppertygrasses— I be to git up ’an 
hustle fur my keep an’ sitch an’ shoe-leather ; so I ups right then 
an’ thur — you may jes bet I did! — an’ I goes a-boatin’ on the ol’ 
State Canal hyur ; an’ I druv’ a six-hoss team uv mules wunst 
all the way from one en’ hyur in the mountins to the yother en’ 
in Pittsburgh ; an’ the way I come to git this hyur game leg, wuz, 
w’en I wuz a-comin’ back, jes this hyur side uv Lockport, I wuz kicked 
right hyur above the knee-cap by the ornriest mule ez ever see a 
tow-path, an’ thet wuz jes Rat-tail Jake. So, you see, I be to know 
a wrinkle ur two ’bout boatin’, an’ not min’ gittin’ a duckin’ now T an’ 
agin. But I say, Cap’in, can’t ary uv ; youens gi’ me ur loan me a 
chaw ’ tobakker — jes to keep my teeth from chatterin’, fur I feel 
a’most a’mighty shaky in these hyur dreepin’ clothes gettin’ wetter 
an’ wetter in this hyur shiverin’ rain.” 

“ We cannot; but I can give you instead a little work to do that 
will answer the same purpose,” I replied a little testily. “ Come to 
the edge of the raft and assist in bringing to it the two girls clinging 
to the telegraph pole in front of us. Take hold of the smaller near- 
est you, and I will catch the other. Steady, Congo, steady ! ” 

Immediately afterward, we added two more to our number, a 
middle-aged woman with an ugly gaping cut in her scalp and a boy 
with his left arm broken. At the same time a rat-terrier and a large 
opossum came aboard without assistance, and curiously from the 
same piece of drift-wood, a short hollow butt of a tree, on the oppo- 
site ends of which they sat facing each other and apparently more in 
dread of each other than of the flood, the dog with his hair bristling 
along his neck and back, and the opossum with her jaws held rig- 
idly apart ; and after getting on the raft, they seemed to regard each 
other still as the greatest danger to which they were exposed : the 
dog coming forward and the opossum going aft, where, coiling her 
long prehensile tail around a projecting splinter from the end of a 
rafter, she closed her jaws, but kept her eyes fixed in the direction 
of the dog. 

At this time, the great Rink ahead of us appeared to hesitate in 
indecision. It had come to a point opposite Grubbtown, whete the 
ascending current of the Kernville maelstrom met the descending 
torrent of the swollen Stony Creek; and whether it would turn into 
the descending or eastern current headforemost, as it were, or tail- 


JANE JANSEN. 


203 

foremost, was a matter of the gravest importance to us in its wake. 
If it continued to go forward, it would still be a protection to us be- 
hind ; but if it came backward, we would be in a measure in front 
of it and run a correspondingly perilous risk of being overwhelmed 
by it. I held my breath while the stupendous ark was trembling in 
the balance. At length, however, I saw the bow of the Great East- 
ern of the Johnstown Flood veer to the left, as it rounded the most 
southerly arc of the Kernville maelstrom and entered the descending 
current, and stop ! quivering from stem to stern, and creaking and 
groaning in every joint ! 

The great structure, requiring a correspondingly great depth of 
water to float in, evidently, in turning out of the old and deep 
channel of Stony Creek to enter the new and shallow around through 
Hornerstown, to the east of Sandy Vale Cemetery, had struck the 
eastern bank of the original stream and could go no farther in 
that direction. 

I breathed again ; and became conscious of what was going on 
around and back, of me on the raft. None seemed to have ap- 
prehended the danger we were in, and all were comparatively free 
from anxiety : the boy patting the head of the dog, the old monkey- 
faced man talking glibly in the Ridge dialect of Southwestern Penn- 
sylvania, the girls holding each other’s hand and looking vacantly at 
the incomprehensible sea of destruction around them, while Congo, 
with the board held idly in his hand, was addressing the motion- 
less opossum on the corner of the raft. 

“ Sit still, Honey. Supper time will be coming by and by ; and I 
am getting very hungry at this unusual work — been a long, long time 
since I saw so much water and handled an oar. Sit still, Honey. 
I’ve seen rougher seas than this ; and we’ll all go ashore together 
when we come to the right port, and I’ll soon take off your wet over- 
coat and make you feel comfortable over a hot fire ; and yoom ! 
yoom ! Hone}", I’ll kiss every blessed bone in your body before I say 
good-night to what’s left of you ! ” 

The raft kept on ; and as it passed to the right of the stranded 
Rink, the contrast in size between the two vessels was appalling. At 
the same time another large structure similarly stranded appeared 
ahead a hundred yards or so ; and with an exclamation of wonder, 
I recognized it as Turners Hall ! and the fact that it had floated from 
the upper part of Johnstown ! Unlike the Rink, however, before 
grounding, the Hall had turned completely around and presented to 
me its front, which, to a great extent, had been broken in in crushing 
the several buildings which it had encountered in its course ; and in 
the large auditorium, I saw two men seated on chairs, with their 


204 


JANE JANSEN. 


feet cocked up on the back of other chairs, and their hats on the 
side of their heads, smoking cigars, and placidly looking out on the 
awful destruction going on before them of hundreds of human be- 
ings and the accumulated wealth of a cluster of thrifty and progres- 
sive towns for half a century ! — as placidly as if they were seated on 
the deck of a steamboat in one of the pools of the Monongahela 
surveying a gust-formed swirl of floating leaves ! 

Turning my eyes from these marvels of placidity, I saw that the 
descending current was divided into a comparatively small and un- 
obstructed stream which ran along the ascending current west of the 
Sandy Vale Cemetery, and a large and spreading and seemingly var- 
iously obstructed torrent that swept through Hornerstown to the 
east of the Cemetery, leaving a vast area of dead and relatively 
shallow water between. 

I saw at once, too, that the small stream was the safer for our frag- 
ile craft with its precious freight of human life, and I was about to 
direct all the able-bodied to make a united effort to turn the floating 
roof into it, when the stream itself relieved us — it being in fact the 
returning flood which had borne us hither ; and the image of the 
two calm figures I had seen haunting me and affecting me in despite 
of my situation and experience, I felt the high tension of my being 
relax in a sigh and was conscious of entertaining a vague conviction 
that the crisis was over and our safety practically assured. 

Scarcely, however, had we gotten fairly into the descending cur- 
rent, than it received a tumultuous accession from the great division 
which involved in its mighty torrent the descending flood of the 
swollen Stony Creek as well as a great part of the waters from Lake 
Conemaugh backing up from the Stone Bridge and the railroad em- 
bankment at the lower end of Johnstown ; and the plaything of the 
raging flood beneath it, our raft dipped and sagged and bent up and 
down to such an extent as not only to fill us with alarm but oblige 
us all to sit down and hold fast to the rafters. But the roof held to- 
gether, and after a little while, became steady enough for Congo and 
myself to resume our former postures and occupations — he at the 
wheel and I on the bridge of the first and last vessel I ever wish 
to be Cap’in of, the last of a long line of skippers though I be. 
And soon after, we added to our list of passengers an old woman 
uninjured, a young man with several of his ribs broken, spitting 
blood and deathly pale, and a boy babe of six or eight months, 
absolutely nude, whom the middle-aged woman at once wrapped in 
her apron and held to her bosom to allay his alarm and still 
his cries. 

We had now on the floating roof ten human beings; and nothing 


JANE JANSEN. 


205 


but the rafters appeared above the surface of the water on which we 
sat or stood in such a manner as to prevent its dipping unduly on 
one side or the other — or, in nautical phrase, to keep our vessel on 
an even keel. Another added, with the excitement incident, would 
jeopard us all. I decided to go to the shore and run the risk of col- 
tiding there with one of the many projecting masses of wreckage, 
which would furnish the survivors a possible bridge to the land, 
rather than continue as we were. 

I directed all who could paddle with their hands or such floating 
pieces of boards w T hich they could secure to go to the left hand side 
of the raft and exert themselves to the utmost, while the helpless 
were put on the extreme edge of the right to balance the rowers, and 
Congo and I stood at diagonal fore and aft corners, he to push and 
steer, and I to direct and lay hold of the first pier of wreckage we 
might come to that offered a reasonable road to safety beyond the 
reach of the flood. 

With less trouble than I apprehended, and in a much shorter 
time, we reached the side of a partly careened house jammed 
against a mass of wreckage which seemingly extended to a low 
island, amid the dismally contrasted tombstones and pines of 
Sandy Vale Cemetery ; and after I had taken hold of the rain-spout 
on the corner of the house and brought the raft to a standstill, while 
several relieved me, I exchanged places with Congo that we all 
might have the advantage of his vastly greater strength in maintain- 
ing our anchorage. 

The monkey-faced man was the first to disembark and was a great 
help to the others — all availing themselves of his assistance but the 
middle-aged woman, who, gathering together the four corners of the 
apron in which she carried the naked babe, and taking hold of them 
with her teeth, climbed up the sloping side of the building to its 
junction with the roof, with both hands free and the baby dangling 
beneath her smiling face. The terrier, too, secured a foothold and 
ran to the ridge. Congo turned his head to see at the same time 
what the opossum and I were doing; and observing that he was di- 
viding his attentions between us, I said to him sharply as I took a 
step toward him, “Congo, never mind the opossum now. Wait 
till 

At this instant I felt a sinking of the raft and a propulsion for- 
ward, as if the level of the maelstrom had been lowered and the 
current accelerated by the yielding of some great obstruction. 

I saw at the same time the partly careened house sink with a 
crash on its side and precipitate all those on it into the water on the 
other side amid a chaos of liberated wreckage, while the end of a 


206 


JANE JANSEN. 


scantling rose from the water and struck Congo under the angle of 
the left jaw with such force as to raise him seemingly from his feet 
and send him staggering, stunned almost to insensibility across the 
raft, where he fell into the water and floundered about in absolute 
helplessness. My eyes followed him ; and as I was about to run to 
his side to drag him on the left hand side of the forward part of the 
raft, I heard my name pronounced distinctly from the water on the 
right hand or landward side. I looked in the direction of the voice, 
and saw Philemon struggling apparently as helpless as Congo and as 
close to the edge of the raft. I was equally distant from both. I 
could save either but not both. 

I ran to Congo ; and falling on my knees, and clutching my both 
hands firmly in his grizzled wool, I held his head out of water; and, 
after exerting myself to the utmost for several minutes, I succeeded 
in getting him on the raft, where, with less danger perhaps but with 
greater distress to me, he threw his arms about wildly and tumbled 
and tossed in such a way as to indicate a violent disturbance of his 
mental faculties — the force of the blow having been transmitted by 
the ramus of the jaw to the temple and paralyzed partially the 
brain of the giant within. 

At the first opportunity I looked back; and seeing nothing of 
Philemon, I burst into a flood of tears. And while I was weeping, 
I asked myself in an agony of doubt, Did I do right ? I clutched 
my swelling bosom, and I pressed against my heaving heart; but 
the only answer I heard in the depths of my conscious self 
was YES ! 

On the spur of the moment, I had acted as I would have done 
after an age of deliberation. Instantly and absolutely my whole be- 
ing had gone out to succor the big-hearted savage who had saved the 
life of my mother and my own prenatal existence in the lava-cavern 
of Hawaii, who had saved my life afterward in the burning log-pile, 
who had saved my life that very day in the flood, and who had been 
from the moment he was rescued from an ocean grave by my father, 
to the present moment, a personification of the most self-sacrificing- 
devotion to his rescuer and his family it was possible for a gigantic 
negro to be ; and after the first gush of tears over my leaving Phile- 
mon to his fate in the awful maelstrom of Kernville and myself a 
wretched woman to the last instant of my existence, I said to my- 
self, I am satisfied — I have done my duty to myself and others. 
My tears ceased to flow ; and I felt my being enlarge and my pow- 
ers of doing and enduring increased indefinitely. 

I turned to Congo and endeavored to keep him quiet with soothing 
words and gentle restraint ; but he was seemingly unconscious of my 


JANE JANSEN. 


207 


presence. I recollected, too, that when his brain had been impover- 
ished by starvation and physical exhaustion in Hawaii, he became 
maniacal ; and the greatest danger I apprehended was an acute at- 
tack of insanity as a result of the stunning blow. I looked around 
me to see what I could do in that awful emergency. 

Behind us at a safe distance came the Unique Rink and Turners 
Hall, descending as they had ascended in the channel of Stony 
Creek. Before us the current was free from obstructions. The raft 
was without a tremor though driving along as rapidly as the current. 
There was nothing to be done in any emergency that I could foresee 
but hold on to Congo and the raft ; and as there was no immediate 
danger in sight, nothing besides was suggested to my mind save the 
melancholy fact that with Congo in his right mind we might go 
ashore with comparative safety at several places where the wreckage 
was piled up in projecting piers, with relatively smooth water below 
them. 

At length the raft passed out of the maelstrom of Kernville and 
entered the smaller but more violent and destructive whirlpool of 
Johnstown ; and I saw to my great astonishment that in a few min- 
utes I would pass over approximately the spot whence I had set out 
and made a complete circuit of two and a half or three miles. 

“ See, Congo, here is the place where you cut loose the horses ; 
and we are not too far from the steep slopes of Green Hill to distin- 
guish them if they have succeeded in making their escape thither. 
Look up and tell me if you can see either Bessie or Fannie. And 
see ! in a minute we shall be crossing Main Street near the spot 
where the Hulbert House stood yesterday — where you heard the 
brass bands play, and saw the soldiers and the children marching, 
and ate peanuts and ginger cakes all day long. See, we are crossing 
it now ! and there, behind that great pile of wreckage is the Franks- 
town Road, you know so well ! 

But my words made no impression on his disordered or bewil- 
dered intellect. 

At length, he muttered, “Sit still, Honey!” and thinking that his 
brain might begin to work where it ceased — like a clock — I pointed 
to the opossum which still clung motionless to the rafter and talked 
to him about having her roasted for his supper as he had done, and 
gradually awoke him to a dim consciousness of where he was and 
what was going on around him. 

As Congo looked around, I did so, too, and saw the Catholic 
Church of St. John ablaze with fire in the midst of the encircling 
sea — the flames spreading over the roof from the burning dwelling 
which had been swept against it, running up the lofty spire, and 


208 


JANE JANSEN. 


consuming on its apex the holy symbol of Christianity — leaving 
seemingly the struggling thousands in the Valley of Death beneath 
it without hope I 

At the same time, hearing a succession of crashes behind me, I 
turned and saw the Unique Rink and Turners Hall, as they followed 
our raft in the tumultuous whirlpool, go to pieces in a succession of 
collapses and flatten into floating masses of roof and walls and 
floors, which, jostling and jamming together in terrific confusion, lost 
their identity as parts of the colossal structures in a few minutes. 

When the Rink began to dissolve I was seized with dismay ; but 
I was not ready yet to sink in despair. I seized the board which 
Congo had used so effectively as a paddle and helm, and exerted my 
utmost strength to push the raft under the lee of the nearer of the 
two ends of the German Catholic Church which we were approach- 
ing in rounding the upper part of the Johnstown maelstrom, or the 
great eddy which having completed a circuit in Kernville made two- 
thirds of another in Johnstown. But without avail. And w r hile I 
was struggling, I called to Congo with the voice of desperation. He 
came to my side. He took the board in his hand. He moved it to 
and fro, but he moved it without the guidance of an orderly mind, 
and the golden opportunity of finding a haven of safety under the 
lee of the sacred edifice — through the walls of which in the initial 
rush of the flood, a number of locomotives or other massive masses 
of iron wreckage from the Round House of Conemaugh Station, had 
been driven, leaving the two enda bridged by the roof standing intact 
— was gone forever. The raft entered the descending current, in 
which the maelstrom current united with the raging torrent still 
coming down the Conemaugh, and down it went along and over the 
northern side of the city with the speed of a race horse, rocking and 
writhing in such a manner that I lay down across the rafters and 
grasped them firmly, thinking the roof would break into pieces at 
any moment. 

In the excitement strangely Congo’s reason was restored, and 
standing firmly at his post with the board dipping deeply between 
two of the sheathing boards forming an effective rudder, he kept the 
raft much steadier than it would have been otherwise, and possibly 
prevented it from parting asunder. 

After passing the great brick Store Building and the adjacent Office 
of the Cambria Iron Company, which had resisted the force of the 
flood, I saw that the railroad embankment between the Stone Bridge 
and the Station had given way ; and I realized the cause of the 
special accident in the general catastrophe which had occurred in 
the Sandy Vale Cemetery. The moment the embankment had melt- 


JANE,, JANSEN. 209 

away — like the Fishing, Club’?. dam, by the overflow and the pres- 
sure converting it intq ^ deliquescent mass — the effect of the escap- 
ing waters in a river-wide rush was transmitted rapidly to the far- 
thest point of the eddying b^ykwaters over Kernville and Johns- 
town and imparted a new impetus to everything afloat. 

As the raft rounded the curve of the Conemaugh at the lower or 
western end of Johnstown, I had a full view on my left of the 
fifteen or twenty acres, of wreckage piled up against the side of 
the mountain above the Stone Bridge. I saw that it was afire in 
many places— here and there burning furiously ; and hearing shriek 
after shriek issuing from the chaotic mass, I felt an icy shudder 
course through my blood as I realized that I beheld the beginning of 
a hecatomb of human beings unparalleled perhaps in the annals of civ- 
ilized man ! My eyes were fascinated by the flames ; and in the in- 
tensity of my gaze, my imagination becoming excited, I saw instead 
of the stupendous chaos before me a shapely sacrificial altar on 
which lay smoking the Heart of Humanity, while Pleasure and Fol- 
ly in the garb of mountebank priests danced in delight around it ! 

The vision vanished as the raft went through the rift in the rail- 
road embankment by the side of the immovable Stone Bridge ; and 
the hope of my heart asserting itself in despite of the convictions of 
my head that Philemon was one among the thousands who must 
have perished in the colossal catastrophe, I looked back over the del- 
uged city and strained my vision to catch a glimpse of him among 
the living, somewhere — somewhere ! but in vain ! 

At the same time, I heard the great clock of the Lutheran 
Church strike the hour of five o’clock — the solemn tones falling on 
my ear like a knell for the departed city— and the world of bliss 
which I had hoped to inhabit w r ith Philemon Holland. 

Immediately afterward, I reflected that I had been afloat three- 
quarters of an hour ; and in that age of excitement and agony, I 
had floated over a course of over three miles. 

Passing the vast iron and steel works of the Cambria Iron Com- 
pany on our right, and entering Cambria City at a fearful rate of 
speed, I directed Congo to keep in the middle of the current as well 
as he could ; thinking it infinitely safer to float down the river on 
the staunch raft the roof had proven itself to be than run the risk 
of striking the partly submerged houses and the equally dangerous 
trees on each side. A string of frame houses, moreover, preceded us 
on the curved back of the swollen river ; and as they were more or 
less intact, and dotted with people, they gave us assurance of safety 
that was encouraging in the extreme. In a half hour at most, I 

AA 


•210 


JANE JANSEN. 


thought, we shall have passed Cambria City and Morrell ville and 
entered an open country where we can find a capacious harbor of 
safety in an overflowed bottom-field. 

But on and on we went without finding the looked-for haven of 
safety, and entered the gorge of the Laurel Range of the Appala- 
chian or Alleghany Mountains, which I have heard old canal-boat- 
men call the Twin Rock Gap, from the peculiar markings of a 
stone by the side of the canal, which bore a fancied resemblance to 
two children with their arms interlocked. On the summit of this 
range twenty miles distant, the Heart of Appalachia stood ; and 
with the thought of my home and the many dear ones there to my- 
self and especially to Congo, my eyes moistened ; and to distract my 
thoughts from a subject that might unnerve me with emotion in an 
emergency, I looked up and down the gloomy mountain sides, with 
white clouds rising here and there from the warm earth saturated 
with water ; and then at the groups of people here and there above 
the reach of the flood, surveying in a stupefaction of awe the evi- 
dences of an overwhelming but incomprehensible catastrophe be- 
neath them. 

At length, as we were approaching Sang Hollow — now a station 
of the Pennsylvania Railroad, formerly a deep ravine in which sang, 
the Ridger’s corruption of the Chinese word ginseng, was found 
abundantly by the gatherers of the precious root — I was startled by 
a succession of screams ahead of us. I looked down the river and 
beheld the string of houses, one after another as they came to a cer- 
tain spot in the middle of the river, roll over and break into pieces, 
scattering their human freight with the wreckage in every direction. 
It was the most continuously thrilling of all the awful sights I had 
seen as yet ; and as there was no escape seemingly from meeting the 
same fate as the succession in front of us, I called out to Congo to 
come to the centre of the raft and be on his guard ; and, when I 
heard him at my side, I laid my hand on his massive arm that had 
been so often a tower of strength to me, and braced myself to meet 
the inevitable shock. 

But the roof passed the spot without a jar where the houses be- 
fore it had gone to pieces ; and from the tops of bushes which I dis- 
cerned bending and swishing in the water on each side of the raft, I 
divined the cause. There was an island in the middle of the river 
submerged sufficiently to permit the passage of the flat roof, but not 
the houses of deeper draft by several feet. 

Below the submerged island we encountered a succession of bil- 
lows which tried our roof severely and compelled us to lie down on 
the rafters and hold fast to them to prevent the waves and floating 


JANE JANSEN. 


211 


timbers from knocking us Ojff ; and when in this position, a beauti- 
ful blue-eyed boy of two or three years of age, stripped of all his 
clothing save a fragment of a shirt around his neck and over his 
shoulders, and bleeding from a number of scratches on his body, was 
thrown against the breast of Congo ; and immediately the frenzied 
child threw his arms around the neck of the gigantic negro and fas- 
tened them there with all the strength the fear of death could evoke 
in his exquisitely rounded limbs. 

At length, the turbulent billows passed, we rose to our feet — poor 
Congo in a dilemma which both of us began to appreciate painfully 
when we found the frightened boy could not be taken from the neck 
of the big-hearted negro without using force, which, in the child’s 
frenzied condition, would result at least in distracting convulsions if 
not indeed in death. Congo, smiling and weeping at the same time, 
looked at the child and then at me ; and then, shaking his head, 
gave an expression to his thoughts which was more effective than 
any sequence of words he might have uttered. 

“ Let us save him if we caii, Congo,” I said, impulsively, but with 
a sense of choking in my throat as I thought that in doing so 
Congo would run a greater risk than I. 

To add to Congo’s discomfiture, which seemed to be inexpressible 
in words, on looking around the raft over the head of the child 
clinging to his neck, he discovered that his paddling and steering 
board had been swept away, and the opossum was not to be seen on 
any of the four corners of the raft or in the turbid waters around it. 
At length, the poor fellow ceased to look around him, and, coming to 
my side* stood a statue of despair that affected me by sympathy al- 
most to the point of giving up all hope and ceasing to exert myself 
further to effect an escape from the mighty rush of waters. 

Soon after, observing a board floating near, I went to the edge of 
the roof, and secured it. It proved to be a new oak fencing board, 
ready pointed for insertion into a morticed post. I called Congo to 
take hold of it and keep the raft in the middle of the current as be- 
fore. But he heeded neither my words nor actions in his apathy and 
insensibility ; and before I could arouse him from his stupor of men- 
tal and muscular inaction, I was obliged to put the end of the board 
in his hand and start the contraction of his fingers upon it with the 
pressure of my own : and immediately the great machine was put in 
motion. He seized the board ; and finding it much more serviceable 
than the one he had before — in fact, a long, strong, and flexible oar 
which he could grasp easily and use quickly and effectively in steering, 
pushing, or paddling, he took heart again, and went to work cheer- 
fully, indifferent to the weight of the frenzied child clinging to his 


212 


JAKE JAttstk 


neck, but carefully guarding his riak^d body from the end of the board. 

And on we went till the increasihg dusk of evening, combined 
with the mist and rain, and the low-hanging clouds of the exceed- 
ingly gloomy day, added an increasing danger to oUr extremely 
perilous position at best in broad daylight. 

On and on, until, discerning in the dim light a vast area of flood- 
ed bottom-land on our left, I directed Congo to leave the middle of 
the great current which was following the bed of the river around 
the field and go with the direct but shallower overflow, where along 
the southern or farthest edge we would find in all probability smooth 
backwater and a safe landing. 

But no sooner, apparently, had our raft left the bed of the river, 
than a broken tree which formed a snag just beneath the surface of 
the water, ripped off* one of the sheathing boards of the roof itid 
the shingles nailed to it ; and the roof dipping and sawing, the snag 
came up between the rafters and held it fast. The next instant, the 
rushing waters coming against the dipping roof tilted it to such an 
angle and whirled it around to such an extent that Congo and I were 
thrown apart into the river current from which we were about to es- 
cape the moment the roof struck the snag. We were half the 
length of the raft apart while on it, and presumably we were the 
same distance from each other when we descended intd the rushing 
torrent — I in front and Congo behind. I struggled to keep my head 
above the surface, instinctively taking hold of everything floating 
which my hands struck — sticks, blocks, twigs, and the like, but evi- 
dently nothing that gave me any support. At length, I experienced 
a smothering sensation while I was whirled passively round and 
round .... 

I awoke some time during the night. The rain was beating down 
upon my partly upturned face. After staring blindly about for a 
moment, I closed my eyes to prevent the rain drops from falling into 
them. I made an effort to move my head — my arms — my body— 
my legs — but I could not stir in the least from the position in which 
I found myself in some unaccountable manner that caused me no 
more pain than that of constraint. I marveled at this, and vaguely 
considering this and that, became unconscious again. . . . 


XL. 


When I awoke the second time, it was broad daylight ; and as my 
face was upturned still, I saw the clouds sweeping above me in 


JANE JANSEN. 


213 


breaking masses without discharging rain. Presently, hearing a 
slight shuffling and clattering at my side, I lowered my eyes as well 
as I could and saw the brass-capped tube of a photographic camera 
directed toward me, and a photographer standing by, looking up at 
the clouds* with his right hand on the brass cap, and holding an 
open-faced bull’s-eye watch in his left. I was wide awake ; and with- 
out being conscious where I was or what had taken place, I realized 
instantly from the camera and the attitude of the artist, that I was 
about to be photographed. 

At length, from habit perhaps more than intent, the photographer 
turned to see whether or not his subject was still in the position he 
had focused it, and looked into my open eyes. 

His brows rose till his forehead was corrugated with horizontal 
wrinkles ; his eyelids parted to the utmost limits of their expansion ; 
his chin dropped, and as his mouth opened and his chest rose with 
a long inspiration, his nostrils were compressed and his nose pinched 
to a pallid point. His amazement and horror. were intense; but as 
I saw him with lowered and oblique vision, he presented an appear- 
ance so ludicrous to me that I photographed him indellibly in my 
memory by the instantaneous process of which I am possessed as 
a birthright. 

His soft, brown, narrow-rimmed felt hat, was thrown back till it 
rested partly on his neck and shoulders, revealing a bumpy bullet 
head, the shocky reddish hair of which recently had been cut as 
closely to the scalp as possible with a horse-clipper; his neck was 
long and the apple protuberant ; his body was short and his limbs 
disproportionately long and meagre — making the rather stylish 
hand-me-down pepper-and-salt business suit that fit his body too 
short by several inches for his legs and arms ; and altogether he sug- 
gested a spider agog, with all its eight eyes concentrated into two. 

Perhaps I smiled, or revealed a pleasurable delight in my eyes — I 
cannot say ; presumably I did both ; for with the expiration of his 
breath, he was encouraged to speak and act, but in such a way that 
indicated he was in a state of great mental and physical agitation. 

“ I thought you were dead ! upon my word ! Wink as much as 
you please, but sit perfectly— I beg your pardon, cannot I do some- 
thing to relieve you ? My name is Zmytte— Z-m-y-double t-e— 
Zmytte, the Photographer of Pittsburgh, synonymous with Enter- 
prise, Originality, and Bedrock Prices. Give me your hand, please. 
Ah, you cannot, I see. Your body and arms to the elbow are buried 
in the mud. You see, when the telegram of R. P. Robert Pitcairn, 
you know, Superintendent of this division Of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad— came to Pittsburgh last night, ‘Johnstown has been wiped 


214 


JANE JANSEN. 


out,’ I jumped on the first train east and came as far as I could — to 
Derry, and then hoofed it here to Nineveh — a long tramp through 
the rain, I tell you — nearly twenty-three miles— where fortunately 
I have an aunt living, the widow Magruder — in a frame house not 
fifty yards away— who took me in and gave me a cup of coffee at 
daybreak that I might begin work as soon as possible : business, you 
know, is business ; and, by the bye, I will just run over and get her 
and her son Murray to assist me in extricating you from your horri- 
ble predicament, half buried in the mud, and your head held up 
by your hair in the stiffened right hand of a gigantic negro lying 
behind you, with , his, left hand pressing ito his broad bare -bosom a 
yellow-haired naked boy, with his arms around the neck of the 
giant ; and lying across the legs of the negro, the carcass of a horse 
on its back, with its head and neck twisted round, and its legs stick- 
ing up ; and dangling on one of the hind legs a broken and, batter- 
ed but readily distinguishable rocking-chair from the parlor of some 
richly furnished house that has been swept away. I beg your par- 
don, Miss, but I doubt if I or any other enterprising photographer 
will be able, to find a more significant and effective group to illus- 
trate the horrible character of the catastrophe, the news of which is 
speeding now around the world and thrilling the hearts of millions. 
Sit perfectly still ; wink as much — I beg your pardon ; shall I bring 
you a cup of coffee ? ” . 

“Yes, if you please; and since I know Murray Magruder, the 
hunter and trapper, very well, tell him, please, his friend Jane Jan- 
sen, is here, living and uninjured, but half-buried in the mud as you 
have described me but as I cannot see myself, and begs him to come 
to her relief.” 

“ And to think you know my cousin ! I will be back in a minute. 
Sit perfectly — I beg your pardon ; I will get Murray before he goes 
away from the table where I left him, to come with a shovel, and 
my Aunt Matty, to come with a cup of coffee.” 

In the deep sleep in which I had passed the night, I was refreshed 
to an extent that surprised me. As the photographer described my 
situation, I followed him intelligently and appreciated the effective- 
ness of the group as an illustration of the horrors of an overwhelm- 
ing deluge ; and I remembered Murray Magruder the instant his 
name was mentioned ; but, strangely I had only a vague realization 
of what had taken place and that I really was half-buried in the 
mud with my head upheld by the corpse of Congo ; and far from 
considering my situation horrible in the extreme, and my person 
foul and forbidding with the mud and slime deposited on it by the 
receding waters of the flood, I seemed to be, while looking up at the 


JANE JANSEN. 


215 # 


overcast sky, in no particular place, to have no visible body, and to 
be simply an amusing existence that somehow created amazement 
and horror. 

In a few minutes the photographer returned, much more excited 
than when he went away from me; but under the control of an or- 
derly and methodical will. The narration of his story to his aunt 
and her son had intensified his appreciation of the horrible scene he 
had witnessed, and the fame and fortune he had missed by waiting a 
moment for the breaking clouds to part and give him a better light 
than he had when he focused the group, and put his mental facul- 
ties into their usual running order. By an occasional turning from 
me to his ready instrument, I divined the cause of a great part of 
his excitement and concern and quietly said to him, “ I can close 
my eyes and sit perfectly still a few moments longer. Take off the 
brass cap of your instrument and secure a negative of the group you 
have described to me before your aunt and Murray come. It is little 
enough that I can do for you in return for what you have done 
for me.” 

“ Never, Miss Jansen, never! As a man of business in business 
for all there is in it, I would have deemed myself the happiest of 
photographers to secure the only negative of the extraordinary 
group of which you form a principal part, when I believed you were 
an inanimate clod, like the corpses behind you ; but as a man born 
of woman, since I have found that you are living and well, I would 
deem myself the basest of mankind to take a mercenary advantage 
of your extraordinary escape from destruction and make vulgar in 
the eyes of the world your inexpressibly horrible situation as a 
young woman in the bloom of youth and beauty ! As a man of 
business, I regret ; but as a man born of woman, I rejoice. I may 
look at my camera, but I do not touch it ; and I come to you with 
the most sincere congratulations on your escape that a man may 
offer who, from one week’s end to another, except during business 
hours, lives in the happiness of his wife and children, and begs now 
to afford you any relief in his power without any further reward 
than the happiness he shall feel in the act.” 

I heard every word the man said. I understood his speech from 
end to end. I was silenced by it. But in the strange reaction of 
my mind from the terrible strain and exhaustion of the day before, I 
said to myself, What an amusing mockery ! This spider-like pho- 
tographer a Janus — an enterprising and original man of business 
who calls himself Zmytte— Z-m-y-double t-e, and talks shop like a 
parrot ; and a man of woman born who feels like a philanthropist, 
reasons like a casuist, and expresses himself like an orator ! How 


216 


JANE JANSEN. 


Philemon and Robley would laugh in their sleeves to see and hear 
him! 

On the arrival of Mrs. Magruder and Murray, the ejaculations of 
wonder, horror, and congratulations that came from their lips would 
fill a chapter. The cup of coffee 'was held to my lips by the good 
woman ; but in the position of my head I could take but a sip at a 
time. This was sufficient, however, judging from my sensations, to 
pervade my whole body ; and had the effect of restoring in a great 
measure my mind to a natural realization of my situation and sur- 
roundings. The world of amusement and mockery vanished, and 
the world of the grossest reality laid bare to the bones was within 
and around me. 

While the widow held my head between her hands, Murray, with 
the exercise of great force, bent back one after another the rigid fin- 
gers of Congo’s hand and disentangled my hair ; and as my head 
sank into the hands of his mother, I found that the muscles of my 
neck had lost their power of contraction from their prolonged ten- 
sion in one position. At the same time, Zmytte was shoveling the 
mud from around my body ; and in a little while, after Murray had 
relieved the busy photographer of the unusual implement in his 
hands, my arms were liberated, and then my body and legs ; and 
with their united strength I was drawn out of the muddy hole in 
which I lay and turned on my side to see with my own eyes the 
gruesome situation I had been in. 

It was as the photographer had described it, with the exception of 
Congo’s hand on his still outstretched and uplifted arm ; but I saw 
in it a significance that none but myself perhaps could see, knowing 
all the relations between us during my pre- and post-natal existence. 
I saw the self-sacrificing spirit which had characterized the big- 
hearted savage in every moment of his existence, manifesting itself 
in his gigantic corpse in a manner so unmistakable in its meaning, 
and so happily contrived by chance to form a most effective scene in 
a picture or as a group in marble, that I did not wonder that my dis- 
coverer, the photographer, as a man of business, regretted, as he 
might the loss of fame and fortune, his failure by a moment of 
cloudiness to secure for himself a negative of the group of which 
the giant was the central figure. With his last breath he had 
pushed me in front of him through the raging waters toward the 
shore, and held my head above the flood ; until he sank from exhaus- 
tion with the millstone of the beautiful boy about his neck — not 
torn away as he might have been in an instant and the giant re- 
leased, but gently held with an outspread hand against the massive 
chest of the heroic African. 


JANE JANSEN. 


217 


I explained the situation to my deliverers. They wept like child- 
ren ; while I — I had felt all the pangs the day before it was possible 
for the h liman heart to feel: my emotional nature was exhausted 
—I shed not a single tear. 

By noon I had been carried to the house of Mrs. Magruder, and 
thoroughly cleansed by the good woman and dressed in her clothes 
and laid on her bed ; while Zmytte and Murray with a great throng 
of people from the town of Nineveh and the surrounding country 
were engaged in searching among the debris of the flood for the liv- 
ing and the dead ; removing, when found, the only one of the former 
besides myself, a little girl with a broken arm and internal injuries 
of a serious nature, to a house of strangers suddenly from sympathy 
become the nearest of kin, and the Several hundred of the latter, in- 
cluding Congo and the unknown beautiful boy, to the planing mill 
of Mr. Neunebaker, where they were washed and laid out for identi- 
fication, the inquisition of the coroner, and burial, as might be de- 
termined on afterward ; and soon after a slight repast, and a discus- 
sion of the best thing to be done under the circumstances, with Mrs. 
Magruder and a neighbor, Mrs. Mitchell, while they soused my 
muddy clothing in several waters and soaped and rubbed and rinsed 
and wrung the several pieces of my apparel again and again to re- 
store them to their original color, (curiously, the detergent qualities 
of the petroleum with which they were polluted expediting the 
change,) I determined on a course of action for the following week or 
two at least. 

To carry out my plans, however, it was necessary for me to have a 
piece of paper and a pencil to write a note to my Aunt Melissa. I 
had a pencil in my pocket; but after searching high and low in the 
house, Mrs. Magruder declared there was not a scrap in the house. 
Scarcely had she said this, when she espied on a shelf under the 
clock an old Agricultural Report which she took down at once, re- 
marking, “ Keep a thing for seven years and you will find a use for 
it. I have kept this for three times seven.” She then tore out sev- 
eral of the full page lithographic plates of cattle and sheep which 
had printing on only the one side, and handed them to me with a 
smile of great satisfaction on her face. 

I wrote on several of them the following letter : — 

“ My Dear Aunt : — Long before this reaches you by the kindness of 
Murray Magruder, you will have heard of the destruction of Johns- 
town by the breaking of the Fishing Club’s dam, which formed the 
Conemaugh Lake of our enchantment for the past several months ; 
and you must be filled with painful anxiety awaiting the details. 

BB 


218 


JANE JANSEN. 


By force of circumstances, we wei^e all involved in the overwhelming 
flood. Grace, Robley, and Sylvester — I know nothing of their fate. 
Philemon, I believe to be drowned, from the circumstances in which 
I saw him by the merest chance for an instant. Cqngo and I were 
together ; and after drifting about in a house and on a root in the 
great eddies formed by the backwaters in Kernville and Johnstown, 
we were swept through a wash-out in the railroad embankment near 
the Stone Bridge, and carried down the river to Nineveh, a distance 
of nine and a half miles, where our raft collapsed, and Congo, with 
a little boy hanging around his neck, was drowned while holding my 
head above the water and pushing my insensible body before him to 
a bank which limited the overflow. Early this morning, we were 
found together in a manner that told in an unmistakable action 
made as rigid as a statue in death, the story of the big-hearted 
hero’s sacrifice to save the lives of the little boy and myself. His 
body is lying here now, at the head of more than two hundred men, 
women, and children who have been found here already. After you 
have broken the awful news to Arabella and her children, and given 
them all the comfort your sympathy can suggest, let Yoko, as quietly 
as possible, make a coffin out of the pine boards on the barn floor — 
and be sure to make it large enough, while Yalu holds the lantern to 
minimize the risk of setting fire to the shavings and hay. Then, not 
later, if possible, than three o’clock in the morning, let Yalu bring 
the coffin here in Robley’s spring-wagon and drive pretty fast to get 
here at nine. Murray will return with him and show him the way. 
After breakfast, then, let one of Robley’s men make all the necessary 
arrangements for the funeral — having the grave dug in the holy 
ground that contains the dust of all our dear ones. 

“ And now my dear aunt, another word to your heart. I feel that 
I am involved in the cause of this awful destruction of millions of 
property and thousands of human beings. I accepted the invitation 
of Sylvester. I went to the lake. I made it the means of my 
pleasure to a certain extent as well as any of the members of the 
club ; and I was no more ignorant and unconscious of the real dan- 
ger of the suspended sea of waters behind a clay embankment that 
might melt any minute into mud, than Sylvester, and doubtless 
three-fourths of the members besides. I must do now all that lies 
in my power to mitigate the widespread and lasting effects of the 
catastrophe; and I trust you will assist me. 

“ From what I have seen, the great work of relief, from the stupen- 
dous magnitude of the disaster and the mountainous environment of 
the scene, must be done by great organizations — the Cambria Iron 
Company, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 


JANE JANSEN. 


219 


Companies, the charitable orders, associations of citizens, and per- 
haps the State ; still there will be much to be done that can be done 
best by individuals who have a motive that will subordinate self and 
sustain them in suffering, and the means to make their efforts satis- 
factorily effective : and as one of these I believe I can be of some 
service, and relieve myself — for the time being at least — of the dis- 
tressing responsibility w'hich I share with Sylvester and his associ- 
ates, and which I will carry in my heart to the grave. 

“ Among the sufferers, I shall be affected most by the motherless 
infants and little children ; and these I will devote myself to, if my 
plans meet your approval. Their greatest want will be milk ; and 
that to a great extent we can supply, in the following manner : 
After milking to-morrow morning early, let Yoko drive all our cows 
and half of Robley’s, at my risk, to the farm of my old friend ’Squire 
Burkholder, a mile or so from Kernville. Here I will meet him in 
the evening and have everything arranged for their reception in one 
of the ’Squire’s fields, and a lodging-place for us secured somewhere. 
Let him carry tw r o large buckets, and drive slowly but steadily so as 
not to overheat the cows. And after the funeral, let Zambie come to 
assist in milking and carrying, and bring a change of clothing for 
himself and Yoko. Bv the way, too, let Yalu bring w T ith him to- 
night, two of my everyday gowns, my brown hat, two pairs of stock- 
ings, and the heavy-soled shoes which Yoko oiled the day before 
I came away ; also, the bag of silver, containing forty-seven dollars, 
in the lower left-hand drawer of the safe. With the clothing I have 
at Rhododendron Cottage, (which I will visit as soon as possible,) 
and the bills in my pocket which have been dried and are as good as 
ever, I can get along for a while — at any rate until my requirements 
shall have become known better from experience. 

“ In conclusion, please open telegraphic communication at your 
earliest opportunity with Robley’s father in Baltimore and Grace’s in 
Pittsburgh, and send important news by messenger to me at ’Squire 
Burkholder’s. The living and the dead are scattered over many 
miles ; and in the chaos that prevails, it will be a long time before 
the appalling list of the latter can be made out — if ever. The wires 
here are monopolized, and will be for several days, by the railroad, 
the press, and the authorities having the public welfare in hand, to 
the exclusion of private messages. 

“ Hoping almost against hope that the death of poor dear Congo 
is the only life-long heart-pang I shall be obliged to suffer, when the 
full measure of the disaster is known, and sending all the sympathy 
to Congo’s family that words can bear from an equal sufferer in his 
loss, I am, Your niece, Jane Jansen. 


220 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ P. S. — Neither Mrs. Magruder nor Murray will take anything 
from me in return for their services. If it can be done, then, let 
Yalu catch the bull-calf ‘Achilles/ which Murray took a fancy to a 
few weeks ago, and conceal him in the wagon ; and he will be obliged 
to accept him when he comes here.” 


XLI. 

After the departure of Murray, I sat* for several minutes in silence 
reviewing what I had written, with the pencil still in my hand and a 
blank page before me; and at length, my mind reverting to my dis- 
covery by the photographer, I began almost unconsciously to sketch 
the group ; and becoming interested as I progressed, I finished the 
picture with great care — modifying the positions somewhat to make 
the details of the representation more intelligible and the contour of 
the whole more artistic, considered either as a picturesque or a 
statuesque group. 

I made the drawing without any definite purpose ; but some time 
later in the afternoon, after the photographer had come to the house, 
covered with mud from head to foot, and so exhausted, that he cast 
his fine camera into a corner of the room as if it were a piece of use- 
less furniture, I said to him, “ After you have washed your hands 
and face, as I see you are about to do, please come here— I have 
something for you — a souvenir for you to keep of our strange 
meeting.” 

His ablutions over — his short hair, long neck, and short sleeves 
permitting him to proceed with dispatch in soaping and sousing his 
face, head and neck, and his hands and wrists without removing his 
collar and coat — he came to my side ; and, taking up the picture, he 
looked at it several minutes with a strange admixture of surprise, 
delight, and disappointment in the expression of his face. 

“Miss Jansen, this is a proof of your genius as an artist,” at 
length he said with great deliberation, “ and I shall prize it very 
highly not only as a keepsake but as a work of art. The slight alter- 
ation you have made in the position of the several figures adds 
greatly to the effect of the group— especially the suppression of the 
body of the horse by sinking it in the mud behind the body of the 
African Herakles ; the elevation of the chest of the negro, bringing 
the manner of his holding the child into view ; the removal of his 
coat and the substitution of a ragged shirt which reveals the mighty 
muscles of his arms and chest ; the change in your own apparel, 


JANE JANSEN. 


221 


from the commonplace to the classic ; and the addition of the broken 
cog-wheel in the foreground, symbolic of the iron works and the 
railroads which have been destroyed ; and the uptilted corner of an 
ornate dwelling in the background, symbolic of the city which 
in a great measure has been wiped off the face of the earth. It 
might be labeled appropriately ‘Faithful Unto Death,’ ‘A Hero’s 
Sacrifice,’ or assuming the figure of the woman to represent yourself 
in reality, ‘ Saved.’ Indeed, Miss Jansen — not to flatter you, though 
what I may say in sincerity may be flattering to you — you have 
made on very indifferent paper a very remarkable picture of the ef- 
fects of a general deluge ; for you have represented here, not only 
men, women, and children, but the different races from the highest 
to the lowest, and as well, the range of human achievements from 
the subordination of the animal kingdon to the ultimate attained by 
machinery, or the range of human life from labor in the field or in 
the shop to ease and affluence in a palace ; and in addition to all 
this, in the upward look of the woman with her back to the dead, 
you have expressed most happily the range of human aspiration, 
from a life on earth evolving from youth to age and involving death, 
to a life everlasting of peace and happiness above the clouds. But, 
Miss Jansen, permit me to say, while your picture is, as I said a mo- 
ment ago, a proof of your genius as an artist, it is not what the pho- 
tograph I was about to take would have been in the eyes of the 
world and invaluable as such, namely, a proof of the destruction of 
Johnstown by an overwhelming flood of waters, and the indescrib- 
ably horrible scenes to be witnessed in the wreck of the great city 
scattered for many miles along the bank of the Conemaugh River. 
Your picture, however truthful in every particular, might be ques- 
tioned and set aside as an artistic ideal or symbolic representation — 
something to delight the eye ; while a photograph would be an un- 
impeachable reproduction of the shuddering reality and secondary in 
its effect on the human heart only to a sight of the group itself. By 
the way, Miss Jansen — please accept my card — if ever you come to 
Pittsburgh, and desire to have a photograph of yourself taken, call 
at the Zmytte Gallery and you will not be disappointed — or money 
refunded. Courteous attendants in waiting, and every convenience 
for out-of-town visitors. And if you will permit me to suggest, Miss 
Jansen ; you would make a striking Rembrandt — your finely chis- 
eled features are the most regular I have ever seen and remind me of 
a statue of some Grecian goddess I have a photograph of in my col- 
lection ; and as a Rembrandt — I see with the eyes of an artist in my 
business, Miss Jansen, and I trust you will consider my remarks not 
out of place — the patch of grey hairs above your forehead will never 


222 JANE JANSEN. 

be seen in the high light on the top of your head.’ 7 

The strange man added much more to the same effect, in his con- 
stant wavering between himself as a man of keen apprehension and 
fine feeling, and unusual powers of expression, and himself as a 
rapacious money-getter in the line of his business. 

Half an hour later, I heard him muttering to himself outside; 
and going to the window, I saw him staring at the picture which he 
held before him with both hands stretched out as if it were some- 
thing endowed with life and great strength and was struggling to get 
away. An instant afterward, he deliberately tore the paper into sev- 
eral pieces, and, after rolling them into a little ball between his 
palms, threw it away. Turning, then, with a troubled look on his 
countenance, he saw that I had witnessed the destruction of the pic- 
ture, and said to me without the slightest embarrassment, “ I did it, 
Miss Jansen, after mature reflection. Some day, I thought, when 
business would be dull, I might come across it, and say to myself, 
‘ How much better off I would be to-day if I had taken Miss Jansen 
at her word, and removed the cap of my camera, while she sat 
with closed eyes a moment longer in her horrible situation ! ’ and to 
prevent the possibility of such an unworthy thought, I concluded to 
tear the picture to pieces, and did so.” 

After a pause of a few seconds, he resumed, “I have made a mis- 
take in coming here that compromises me seriously. I was in my 
gallery at the time I heard the news of the destruction of Johnstown, 
and on the spur of the moment, as a matter of business, I decided 
to come and if possible be the first on the ground as an effective ad- 
vertisement of my enterprise. But this is no place to be engaged in 
one’s own affairs for gain ; and my blood runs cold, Miss Jansen, 
when I sit in judgment on myself and pronounce myself a veritable 
ghoul in intention but happily spared from being one in fact by a 
glance from your opening eyes. To the last breath of my existence, 
I shall be indebted to you, as only a husband and father can feel in- 
debted who desires above all things to live in the love and the high- 
est estimation of his wife and children. 1 have not made a negative 
to-day, and will not. Now, to the point. I have heard from Mrs. 
Magruder an inkling of your intentions ; and I have come to the 
conclusion to drop my business, for a while at least which I can af- 
ford to do, and join with you in affording all the relief in my power 
to the afflicted. As an earnest of my willingness to labor in this 
new field, I may say that, until I became exhausted, I have assisted 
from early morning in the horrible work of searching for dead bod- 
ies in the mud and wreckage and removing them to the improvised 
morgue in a planing-mill ; and if you will permit me to accompany 


JANE JANSEN. 


223 


you, and supplement you in your special work of relief, as only a 
man may hope to do as a man among men and a father among 
children, who has ever in his mind his own beloved little ones at 
home to make him sympathize with the sufferings of all others, I 
shall consider it an honor as well as a favor, and will endeavor to 
prove myself in every way worthy of your condescension.” 

u With pleasure and great encouragement in my project, Mr. 
Zmytte,” I replied ; “ for I have been accustomed for the past four 
years to work in double-harness with an estimable man ; and I have 
learned to appreciate the mutual advantages of the opposite sexes 
when engaged in a common pursuit.” 


XLII. 

The following Sunday morning, the sun shone in a cloudless sky 
and gladness reigned seemingly everywhere — even amid the muddy 
wreckage in the valley of the Conemaugh and among the thousands 
of commingled sufferers and sympathizers, and curious sight-seers 
not yet melted by a surfeit of affecting sensations into the common 
mud of humanity — everywhere, save in the heart of the silent suf- 
ferer) merging in a tearless stupefaction of woe, an individual be- 
reavement in the collective calamity as yet without bounds. 

Yalu and Murray came at the appointed time with the coffin and 
the calf; and after Yalu, (by the special permission of Dr. R. B. 
Hammer, coroner of Westmoreland county,) had gone with the body 
of Congo, carefully swathed in muslin which I had purchased in 
the store at Nineveh, and decked with all the flowers Mrs. Magruder 
and Mrs. Mitchell could collect for me in their several gardens, Mur- 
ray was constrained by the circumstances to yield, but only on the 
relieving consideration to his conscience that he might be permitted 
to sprinkle the bull’s head with a few drops of the muddy water of 
the Conemaugh and rechristen him Congo, in commemoration of the 
self-sacrificing hero. 

Zmytte left his camera in the care of his aunt ; and having taken 
up my bundle of extra clothing, we wedged ourselves into the 
densely packed train that came from the west to Nineveh Station, 
and proceeded to Sang Hollow, as far as the condition of the track 
would permit. Thence we walked, partly along the track and partly 
over the hills by a short-cut path, to Cambria City, where I inspect- 
ed the hundreds of dead bodies gathered together for identification 
in several places, to learn the worst that might have happened to me 


224 


JANE JANSEN. 


at the earliest moment. Several of the corpses had cards pinned on 
them, containing the names and residences of the dead as they were 
identified by any of the throng that viewed them ; and on one my 
companion found a card bearing my own name, which he removed 
and considerately concealed from me till we were alone, when he 
handed it to me, with the enquiry, “Do you recognize the hand- 
writing ? ” 

“ I do not.” 

“ I believed you would not; for the person who mistook the body 
of the young woman on whom I found this pinned, was certainly 
not an observing acquaintance. Her face and form though comely 
or even beautiful are no more like yours than every-day is once in a 
thousand years. I beg your pardon if I embarrass you, Miss Jan- 
sen : I have left the camera of an artist behind me, but not 
his eyes.” 

I wondered who could have made the mistake ; and regarding the 
removal of the card a fortunate happening inasmuch as it might 
have misled and prevented the true identification of the body, I put 
the card in my pocket and thought nothing more about it. 

When we arrived at the Stone Bridge, I beheld the conflagration 
which still raged here and smouldered there amid the acres of 
wreckage which had been piled almost tree-top high in the original 
bed of the Conemaugh above the arched obstruction, along the foot 
of the mountain toward Kernville; and looking over the flaming 
and smoking mass, I surveyed a lake of muddy water which in 
ghastly mockery mirrored the shattered walls and the tilted roofs 
of the ragged remnants of the former City of Johnstown! 

A few minutes before our arrival, a woman had been rescued alive 
from the great burning area ; and a shudder ran through my blood, 
as I heard men and women with blanched faces around me remark, 
“ One saved; but who can say how many have perished, and passed 
into indistinguishable ashes ! ” 

From the Stone Bridge to the western side of Kernville, we clam- 
bered along the mountain side among the thousands of men, wom- 
en, and children who had gathered there from every part of the 
country for many miles around— many of them, in their utter ina- 
bility to comprehend the catastrophe by reason of its immensity, or 
feel a sympathetic pang for a sufferer by reason of their numbers, 
regarding their excursion to the ghastly sepulchre of thousands as a 
pleasure picnic, were laughing and shouting and partaking of their 
luncheons and liquors in a way that contrasted shockingly with the 
real solemnity of the scene and the awful significance involved in it 
to couutless thousands of human beings to the end of their days. 


JANE JANSEN. 


225 


Thence we made our way to Rudolfs Roost, the residence of my 
old friend Rudolf Burkholder — the ’Squire by general acclamation, 
and a grand embodiment of the long-headed Teutonic leaven that is 
impressing its characteristics on the mass of the population of Penn- 
sylvania, more and more perceptibly as the years roll along ; and 
somewhat to my discomfiture, I learned from his good wife, Mother 
Gertrude, whom I found almost distracted among a rabble of refu- 
gees on the porch, that her husband was locked up in a room up- 
stairs suffering the most excruciating pain, and permitting none to 
enter hut herself to minister to him. 

“Dear me, my daughter! I am absolutely beside myself,” ex- 
claimed the disturbed old lady, adjusting her cap and apron me- 
chanically while she spoke, “ running up and down and here and 
there, between the ’Squire who is as cross and surly as a whole cage 
full of bears with sore heads, and these poor people about the house. 
Excuse me, Jane — Now, Tommy, my boy, run out and tell Matilda 
to take out the bread — it has been soaking long enough in the oven ; 
and tell Mike to quiet that barking dog in the smoke-house with 
some milk, or the ham-parings on the second shelf in the pantry — I 
do wonder whose poor starving beast it is ! 

“ Dear me ! if I were not made of horse-shoe nails and fiddle- 
strings, as the ’Squire says, I would be dead with all this worry and 
confusion. Please take chairs, if you can find them, and sit down 
and be comfortable. You see, my daughter, w r e had just risen from 
the supper table, and the ’Squire had eaten heartily of a pot-pie I 
had made of an off-colored Plymouth Rock rooster, that had disap- 
pointed us besides in his get-up, when the news came that the Fish- 
ing Club’s dam had burst and drowned half the people in the Valley 
from South Fork to Cambria City ; and the ’Squire became deathly 
sick at once. I managed to get him to bed ; and a little after mid- 
night, when the house was filling up with wet and muddy and 
hungry people, and I was all in a tangle, he began to howl with pain 
and kept it up till I really thought he would raise the roof from the 
house ! The pain started first in the ball of one of his big toes ; and 
then it went to his heel, and ankle, and knee, and every joint of his 
body ; and then to his stomach and bowels. And I did everything a 
woman could — I made him mustard plasters and turpentine stupes, 
and fried onions and burnt tobacco, feathers, and sulphur, and 
soaked flannel with camphor and arnica and witch-hazel ; and the 
more I did for him, man-like the worse he got. And, of course, I 
sent here and there and everywhere for doctors ; but none came — 
most of them being drowned, you know. By chance, however, half 

CC 


226 


JANE JANSEN, 


an hour ago, old Doctor Postlewaite came driving past in his rattle- 
trap of a seventeenth century buggy— coming down from the Ridge 
to see for himself the ruins of Johnstown, I suppose; and I sent 
one of the men out to call him in : I would not have done it myself 
for the world ; for, between you and me and the gate-post, while I 
believe he has not the long nose and the short tongue he has, for 
nothing, and that he is the best of physicians as well as the worst of 
collectors, yet he is forever and ever disparaging the blue blood of 
the Burmeisters that flows in my veins and intimating that the 
Burkholders are not any better than they should be, and I begin to 
feel my bristles rise the moment I see him. And dear me ! here he 
comes — the stairs creaking under his weight ! Talk of the d — octor, 
and he’s sure to appear. 

“ Well, Doctor, I presume you have examined the ’Squire to your 
satisfaction and diagnosed his ailment with your usual comprehen- 
sion and precision,” continued the excited woman, turning from me 
to the ponderous old physician as he came to the foot of the stairs, 
and, looking over Mother Gertrude’s head, nodded a general recogni- 
tion to the throng in the room and a particular to me, whom he had 
seen betimes behind the register in the Heart of Appalachia; “ and 
you can tell me now if you will, whether or not he is goingcrazy ? — 
in short, what is the matter with the ’Squire ? ” 

“ Gout,” replied the physician complacently. 

“ Nonsense ! ” retorted Mother Gertrude, nettled at once, and red- 
dening to the roots of her hair. “ Are you not ashamed of your- 
self to villify a respectable man in his own house, before his own 
wife, and in the presence of his guests ? A more temperate man in 
his eating and drinking, and a more regular in taking exercise in 
the open air, than Rudolf Burkholder, never breathed the breath of 
life. As well tell me, hob-nailed liver or jim-jams.” 

“ Inherited,” interjected the doctor quietly. 

“ Nonsense ! ” retorted Mother Gertrude again. “ I knew his 
father and his grandfather as well as I did my own ; and they were 
as abstemious as the ’Squire, and horny-handed sons of honest toil 
in the fields and forests like himself — which everybody not a thous- 
and miles from here is not.” 

“ No matter, mother,” replied the physician gravely ; “ his great 
grandfather might have been a high-liver in Germany — a gourmand 
and a guzzler in ease and affluence — some one of his many illustri- 
ous ancestors certainly ; and the same mental and emotional shock 
which he received with the news of the destruction of Johnstown, 
which caused the fit of indigestion when he rose from the table Fri- 
day evening, has developed in him a latent tendency to gout which 


JANE JANSEN. 


227 


he has inherited somehow from his ancestors ; as, I doubt not, the 
Johnstown Flood will bare to the bones a great deal more that has 
been hidden in humanity for ages ! ” 

u Nonsense ! nonsense ! the most intolerable nonsense I have ever 
heard you utter; and I have borne before until I thought my back 
would break. I know the history of the Burkholders from a to 
izzard, and I defy you to name me one that was an intemperate 
wine-bibber.” 

“ Noah,” responded the grave physician, looking over the head of 
the irate woman, winking at me, and distorting the lower part of his 
face, as if he was striving to keep down a smile by swallowing it as 
often as it rose in his gullet from some seat of humor and pleasantry 
in his anatomy. 

“ Noah be hanged ! The only Noah mentioned in the history of 
the Burkholders was an adopted son of Gottlieb Burkholder, the 
mayor of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. He was a Maier, and had not 
a drop of Burkholder blood in his veins ; and besides, he died 
without issue.” 

“ Well, well, no matter.” 

“ Yes, but it does matter, when a good name is involved ; and it 
does not stand to reason that the ’Squire is afflicted with gout, any 
more than it accords with the history of the family ; for while the 
excruciating pain began in the ball of one of his big toes, it is not 
confined to that joint; and already, it has jumped from joint to 
joint into every part of his body.” 

“ Very true, mother ; it is the grasshopper kind, which the old 
doctors, before they learned to speak and write every-day English, 
used to call aberrant, erratic, or irregular gout.” 

“ But, my good man — and you cannot gainsay it in English, 
Latin, or Greek, or that sweetest and most expressive of all the lan- 
guages of the globe to me, Pennsylvania Dutch — the ’Squire’s pain 
is not confined to the joints, as it should be if it is gout, or anything 
of the nature of gout; for almost from the first, it has been betimes 
in the stomach and betimes in the bowels. So, confess that you are 
slandering my good husband and be hanged, as you deserve to be, at 
once.” 

“ No; not yet; it is the crab kind of gout, as well as the grass- 
hopper, which the old doctors used to call misplaced, retrograde, or 
retrocedent gout ; or rather, it is a cross between the grasshopper and 
the crab ; but howsoever designated or acquired, the disease with 
which your good husband is afflicted is undoubtedly 

“ It is no such thing ; and I will not have it ! ” 

“ Then let us compromise and call it gastro-arthritis, which, in 


228 


JANE JANSEN. 


this case, may be translated liberally, the Irony of Fate ; since it has 
been developed in the last man in the world that should be afflicted 
with a resultant of what he condemns the most vehemently and 
avoids the most scrupulously, the vices of the rich.” 

“ Well, I do not care; but you shall not call it the gout, and lower 
my good husband in the estimation of his friends. Now, for the 
treatment, since we agree at last in our diagnosis — What do you 
prescribe ? ” 

“ First, a discontinuance of your domestic remedies, Mother Ger- 
trude, if you please, which, as you have discovered, I dare say, have 
an effect on your good husband, second only to his g — astro- 
arthritis.” 

“ You horrid man ! The ’Squire may die a thousand deaths be- 
fore I ever will call you in again.” 

“ Then, a compound of forbearance and patience, to which a little 
flannel or a feather pillow may be added, as the pain in his foot may 
suggest ; until I can get back from my office with more specific 
remedies, the names of which, not being in the high German of the 
Keystone State, would jar in your ears if I were to utter them, so 
considerately, I refrain.” 

“ Go on — having borne what I have, I can endure anything you 
may say.” 

“ In the meantime, since I see a remedy before me which will do 
him more good than all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia, I advise, di- 
rect, and prescribe the administration thereof at once.” 

And what is that, pray ? ” 

“ Miss Jansen, here, whose reported destruction in the flood he 
has been bemoaning to me. Her name not only appears in the 
published list of the lost ; but your hired man, Mike, has told him 
that he himself identified her body among the dead found in Cam- 
bria City, and pinned a card bearing her name on it. Take her up 
this very minute, and the gentleman whom I saw through the win- 
dow accompanying her.” 

The physician took his leave ; and Mother Gertrude following him 
to the gate, smiling, and whispering several sentences of an agree- 
able import to both, I inferred that their jarring and jangling was 
more apparent than real — more a habit of antagonizing each other 
to draw out their several natures and enlarge them, rather than to 
overcome and suppress. I was confirmed in this by the first remark 
she made on her return, “ Dear me ! Jane ; that is always the way 
with us. Next to the ’Squire, I really think he is the very best man 
in the world ; but somehow — well, cats that spat, you know, do not 
always fight. Come along.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


229 


I followed Mother Gertrude, and Mr. Zmytte followed me ; and as 
quietly as we could, we ascended the stairs, and entered the room to 
find the afflicted big-bodied, robust, and vigorous man of fifty or 
thereabout, sitting in a wide arm-chair, with his right foot on a pile 
of pillows on the floor, grinding his teeth in a paroxysm of pain, and 
barely recognizable in the distortion and discoloration of his face. 

As Dr. Postlewaite had said, the poor man was suffering from an 
acute attack of the gout for the first time in his life; and the disease 
had been developed in him from an inherited tendency, (which he 
was free to admit if his wife was not,) by the shock which he exper- 
ienced on learning of the overwhelming catastrophe, within a mile or 
so of his door. And, as might be inferred from the well-known na- 
ture of the disease, he was now as irritable and unreasonable as in 
health he was the opposite. 

“ I am glad to see you, Jane ; but do not come near me — do not 
move. And, mother dear, do go down-stairs and silence that mob of 
rioters. Talk about a man’s house being his castle! Th underation ! 
the very instant of my existence I require a refuge from even the 
shadows and echoes of the outside world, my house becomes an 
asylum for all the iron-shod and donkey-voiced riffraff of the coun- 
try. There is somebody slamming the gate now, as if he were clos- 
ing it in the face of a pursuing bull ; and why those mossbacks and 
jayhawks cannot sit down on the bench on the porch, without drag- 
ging it over the floor from one end to the other, I cannot imagine! ” 

And much more to the same effect the hyperesthetic sufferer 
blurted out, before I ventured to say a word. 

At another time, or under other circumstances, I perhaps would 
have sympathized with my old friend in his suffering and felt a cor- 
responding degree of distress ; but coming as I had from the very 
heart of the horrors and agonies of the Valley of the Conemaugh, I 
was absolutely callous to his temporary tortures of a physical nature 
purely, and unconsciously afforded him a certain relief by my stone- 
like immobility. 

In fact, had I not realized that the morbid condition of the good 
and great man, with all its attendant apprehensions, illusions, and 
exaggerations of sensation, was the measure of the sympathy he in- 
stantaneously felt for the thousands of sufferers in and by the over- 
whelming catastrophe, I would have turned from him with contempt 
and loathing as a mockery of misery and manhood. 

At length, after we had exchanged a few personal remarks, I 
broached the object of my visit and briefly detailed my plans to 
him. He listened with impatience ; and before I had concluded, he 
blurted out with a vehemence that surprised me, “No! I cannot and 


230 


JANE JANSEN. 


will not be bothered with any such arrangement. I sympathize of 
course with — confound this excruciating torture ! — the homeless and 
the distressed ; but not when their condition is the result of their 
insatiate greed and consummate folly. They had no business to 
build their city in a mountain gully and hang a plaything of a fish- 
pond half as big as a township four or five hundred feet above their 
heads to come down upon them some day inevitably and drown 
them like rats in a trap. They deserve all they have got, every 
mother’s son of them ! ” 

“You are right, perhaps, ’Squire, in condemning some, the wise 
and experienced, those who should have known the danger and de- 
stroyed the dam at low water and by degrees — or rather, who 
should never have built it at all ; but ” — 

“ I will not argue the question.” 

“ You will not condemn,” I continued, “the good old mothers of 
these foolish men, and their faithful wives who cling to them 
in their folly.” 

“There ! not another word. You women cannot talk to a man a 
minute about justice without pouring in a broadside about good old 
mothers and faithful wives ” — 

“ And little innocent children, that never yet, in want of clothing, 
food, and shelter, made an appeal in vain to a man or woman 
worthy of the name of human beings — and never will to my good 
old friend ’Squire Burkholder, though he be tortured at the time 
with all the ills that afflict mankind in addition to the gout.” 

“ Stop ! the gout is all in one. But what did you say, Jane, you 
wanted to do ? ” 

“ I want to rent the best of your meadows for a month at least, 
that I may turn into it this evening eleven head of Jersey cows and 
milk them and carry the milk into the upland parts of Kernville 
and Johnstown, where the survivors of the great flood are congre- 
gated, and give it to the starving babes and little children whose 
mothers have been drowned, or swept down the river many miles 
from them and cannot get back. Will you rent it to me ? ” 

“ No I you confounded — I beg your pardon, you wily Mountain 
Witch. I will not rent you an inch of my land and you know it, 
as well as I do myself. Come and take all I have — farm, house, 
barn, outbuildings, horses, men, chickens, hogs — everything about the 
place but the dear old woman to whom I was wedded before you 
were born, or it might be another ; and if that will not suffice, buy, 
beg, or borrow in my name among my good neighbors until you are 
satisfied. You thought I would deny you anything, you confounded 
— you wily Mountain Witch ? You, who have beguiled even old 


JANE JANSEN. 


231 


Gershom Pearlesteine, the Jew peddler who has been hawking needles 
and pins and nicknacks over the mountains for the past sixty years, 
into thinking you are his daughter? You — confound this — I beg 
your pardon — but who is this gentleman you have brought along 
with you — another victim of your wiles, I’ll warrant ? ” 

“ This is a photographer from Pittsburgh who has volunteered to 
assist me — his name, Mr. Zmytte. Let me present him to you — Mr. 
Burkholder, Mr. Zmytte.” 

“ You come recommended well, Mr. Zmytte, and I am glad to 
know you. Your first name is ? ” 

“ Lycurgus.” 

“ And your father was ? ” 

“ Leonidas.” 

“ I thought so. I saw a resemblance between you and somebody 
whom I knew, but I could not place him in my mind. You are a 
son of Leonidas Smith, of Somerset county, a friend of mine in his 
lifetime ; and though not so good looking, perhaps, bigger than you 
by a half and brawnier, while he called himself Smith — how came 
these changes ? ” 

“ When my father died, I was a little boy ; and as he left nothing 
but a good name and a large family of boys and girls behind, we 
were obliged, one and all, to go to work at once for a living. Think- 
ing I could do better in a city than in the country, I went to Pitts- 
burgh ; and, after selling newspapers in the streets for seven years and 
accumulating a snug sum of money, I apprenticed myself to a pho- 
tographer. A short time afterward my employer failed. I bought 
his establishment ; and having married his eldest daughter and em- 
ployed him — now my father-in-law — as an operator, I continued the 
business under the name Zmytte for the effect it would have, not 
only in singling me out from the honorable herd of Smiths, but also 
in forcing recognition and remembrance by the public, which is the 
foundation of success in any business.” 

“Just so; the same old story in a new dress. The more intense 
struggle for existence in the city than in the country creating a bet- 
ter opportunity to make money and a greater greed to possess 
money, or the means of living; while the body, by and through 
which living alone is possible, is stunted and weakened in the cease- 
less strife, till even the name it bears is warped and twisted from 
Smith to Zmytte. Take my advice, Lycurgus — with the lesson of 
city life and city pleasure and city destruction of human life by the 
thousands, which the awful ruins in the Valley of the Conemaugh 
afford to-day — come back to the country, with your city wife and 
your city children, if such you possess, and build up your body and 


232 


JANE JANSEN. 


the bodies of your wife and children to a healthy and vigorous stan- 
dard, under the name of Smith ; that when they die, as die we all 
must some day, they will die singly on a downy bed surrounded by 
loving ones in tears, and not in a huddled herd of thousands in a 
river wallow to be fished out by gaping strangers and buried in 
doubt as to their identity by an agonized tearless survivor. But — 
confound this infernal gout! — this is no time for preaching. Abide 
here with Jane — whom all the old men in the country, for many 
miles around her mountain home, love, and the young men, too, I 
do not doubt — and take my place in assisting her in her good work, 
which I am prevented from taking now by this — Please get out of 
earshot as quickly as you can, that I may express myself as the exi- 
gency of the case demands.” 

Having descended from the atmosphere, heavily laden with the 
odors of Mother Gertrude’s domestic remedies, which surrounded 
the afflicted advocate of country life with a maximum of growth and 
health, in competence, against a city life with a minimum, in afflu- 
ence, my companion, lost in reflection, remarked, “ A third lesson 
like the two I have received already, from you, Miss Jansen, and 
your truculent old friend, and my wife and children will not know 
me when I return. You have made me throw aside my camera — 
the symbol of my business; he would have me throw aside my 
name — the symbol of my success in the struggle for existence in a 
great city ; while the third person to instruct me will compel me to 
cast aside all the little individuality 1 have left in my deteriorated 
and most commonplace carcass under the name of Smith. 

“ And that third person, I opine, Mr. Zmytte, from the good heart 
you have inherited from vour worthy father, will be the first mother- 
less babe whom you feed and fondle into smiling health amid the 
wreckage of the Johnstown deluge.” 

“ So be it, Miss Jansen, I sincerely pray.” 

Soon after, I encountered Mike between the house and the barn. 

Eyeing me suspiciously, he turned to one side to avoid meeting 
me directly ; but I turned also, and confronted him face to face. 

“ Sure, thin, it was your twin sister? ” said the astonished Irish- 
man, raising his hat. 

“ No, Mike; I never had a sister.” 

“ Thin, your mither, the very image of her purty daughter? ” 

“ No ; my poor mother died many years ago.” 

“ Thin, be the powers, there’s more raysons than one for the ould 
’Squire’s callin’ you a witch ! ” 

“ Howsoever, Mike ; I hope you will not mistake another for me 
again, living or dead ; and that you may know me as a particular 


JANE JANSEN. 


233 


friend from this time on, please accept my card.” 

And I handed the wondering man the very card which he 
himself had pinned on pay supposed body among the dead 
in Cambria City. 


XLIII. 

Yoko arrived with the cows somewhat later than I expected ; but 
he had been careful not to overheat them by rapid driving ; and 
accustomed to a great mountain range, they endured the heat of the 
day and the fatigue of the long journey of twenty-one or -two miles 
remarkably well. 

I assisted in the milking ; and the dusk of evening having set in 
before this operation was finished, I gave half or more to the hungry 
refugees who had come for shelter to the big barn on the Burkholder 
farm, and sent the remainder — about six gallons in two large buckets 
— into Kernville with my assistant, who zealously begged not so 
much for himself, he said, as for ’Squire Burkholder whom he rep- 
resented, to be the first to carry milk into the city for the relief of 
the infantile sufferers. 

Several hours afterward, while I was writing a message to the 
housekeeper of Rhododendron Cottage, reporting my safety, and re- 
questing the transmission of my baggage by the bearer, with any 
news she might have of my missing friends, my assistant returned, 
seemingly in a condition of physical collapse from exhaustion, but 
with the fire of enthusiasm still gleaming in his eyes and flickering 
in a faint smile of satisfaction around his mouth. 

“ I am glad to see you back, Mr. Zmytte.” 

“ Mr. Smith, if you please, Miss Jansen. I am not in business 
here.” 

“ As you will, Mr. Smith ; but tell me how you have succeeded — 
how you disposed of the milk — how you found the little ones after 
night, if at all ? ” 

“ That was the easiest part of all — I went wherever I heard a cry, 
and bawling out, Here’s your nice fresh milk ! — you know I carried 
newspapers in the city for seven years, and it came naturally to me 
to call out what I had, as soon as I got started — I was surrounded 
in a little while with a crowd of customers begging for spoonfuls and 
drops ; and the hardest part of all was to hear the dipper rattling 
against the bottom of the bucket amid the sighs of the women and 

DD 


234 


JANE JANSEN. 


the cries of the children. I wish, Miss Jansen, you had a thousand 
cows instead of eleven.” 


XLIV. 

We were all up at break of day the following Monday morning ; 
and after milking the cows and setting the milk to cool in the big 
stone trough of the ’Squire’s spring-house while we ate a sandwich 
and drank a tin-cup of coffee standing among the refugees on the 
porch, I sent one of the ’Squire’s employees in a spring-wagon, with 
my note, to the housekeeper of Rhododendron Cottage — or rather, 
one of his pets, a full-blooded American Redskin, To-ga-to-maugh, 
by name, otherwise, Injin Jim, the ’Squire’s Big Injin, the ’Squire’s 
Pet Copperhead, and the like, whom the enthusiastic exponent of 
country life versus city life kept about him in the expression of his 
admiration of the superb physique of the open-air-breathing sav- 
age. Immediately afterward, Mr. Smith, carrying two buckets, Yo- 
ko carrying two, and a volunteer among the refugees the two I had 
filled for myself, and I, with the dipper, trudged into Kernville, and 
met with the experience of Mr. Smith the evening before. 

In the afternoon, accompanied by Yoko, I got across Stony Creek 
at the ferry that had been established, and visited the Sandyvale 
Cemetery, where the body of Philemon might be found .if he per- 
ished where I had seen him struggle seemingly hopelessly in the 
raging waters. I did not tell Yoko why I went to that particular 
part of the wreckage; but he soon divined the cause; and while I 
groped about in a stupefaction of woe otherwise absolutely inexpres- 
sible, he silently turned over boards and rubbish and scanned care- 
fully every trace of a human being which he found — hat, shoe, or 
shred of clothing : leaving all in the end as in the beginning, an in- 
finite desert shore of desolation. 

Afterward, I went to the several morgues which had been estab- 
lished in Johnstown and the immediate neighborhood, and silently 
passed from one to another of hundreds of dead bodies awaiting 
identification and burial by friends or strangers, as the case might 
be, without seeing one that bore any but the vaguest resemblance to 
Philemon or other of my missing friends. 

At length, seeing a newsboy selling Pittsburgh papers containing 
presumably the lists of the dead as far as they had been made out, 
I purchased one of each ; and near the head of the list in the first 
journal I opened, I saw my own name and farther down the names 


JANE JANSEN. 


235 


of Sylvester and Philip — evidently for Philemon — Holland. I could 
read no more ; but I was not satisfied. I was not among the dead, 
while my name appeared in the list ; and he might not be similarly ; 
and in the confusion that reigned among the scattered and bewil- 
dered survivors, I realized that little reliance could be placed in the 
accuracy of any list as a whole for weeks and months — if 
indeed, ever ! 

As I was about to return to ’Squire Burkholder’s, I was accosted 
by a young man who had been employed in some capacity about 
the Merchants Hotel and who recognized me. 

“ You are Miss Jansen, I believe? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I thought I could not be wrong. I never saw you but once in 
my life before ; but once is enough to see some persons and never 
forget them. A man has found a scrap of paper down here that 
concerns you ; and if you will come with me, I will identify you ; 
and I doubt not, he will give it to you.” 

A little while afterward, I had placed in my hand by a stranger a 
muddy piece of paper which I found to be the first bill I had ever 
made out as an innkeeper — that on which I drew the flattering like- 
ness of my first guest, Gershom Pearlesteine — then unknown to me, 
but ever afterward Papa Pearlesteine; and below the items of the 
bill, and continued on the other side of the paper, I discovered a 
properly executed will, in which, in a few w 7 ords, the old man gave, 
bequeathed, and devised to me all his property, real, personal, and 
mixed, of whatsoever nature or kind, and wheresoever the same 
might be found at the time of his death. 

“ He had a mint of money somewhere,” said the man who had 
recognized me ; “ but I will not congratulate you on your fortune 
until you have found his strong-box in the wreckage of Johnstown, 
which is scattered from here to the Gulf of Mexico, if all the 
accounts of the flood you see in the papers are to be believed.” 

“ I thank you, my friend, for the favor you have done me ; and I 
beg to assure you, that I would learn of the escape of the poor old 
man with his life, with infinitely greater joy than the discovery of a 
dozen chestfuls of gold labeled mine.” 

“ Well, I wouldn’t, Miss Jansen, if I were in your shoes,” frankly 
responded the man. “He was just about ready to die at any rate; 
and the Jew’s life he led was worse than a dog’s — carrying a pack 
on his back from morning till night, that would stagger a white man 
in an hour. But he had one redeeming quality : if he did not know 
how to live, he certainly did, as this paper testifies, how to die. 
Good-bye.” 


236 


JANE JANSEN. 


Hastening home to ’Squire Burkholder’s, the cows were milked, 
and the milk cooled while supper was eaten ; and away we went as 
in the morning with twenty gallons of milk or more to nourish 
eighty or a hundred little children in the crowded dwellings which 
surrounded the desolated districts of the deluged city. 

Returning after nightfall, I found awaiting me my baggage from 
Rhododendron Cottage, and a letter which agitated me to such an 
extent I could not open it for several minutes ; for I recognized it 
from the handwriting as having come from Grace. 


XLV. 

“ My Dear Jane : — I cannot tell you how glad Robley and I are 
to know you are still in the land of the living ; and I have such 
worlds to tell you of what has happened to us, I do not know where 
to begin. My mind is like a keg of nails, pointing in every direc- 
tion. But no matter ; we got out alive; and we hope that Philemon 
and Sylvester got out alive too ; then, excepting dear old Congo, of 
whose loss you have written, our party would be intact. 

“ How we managed to escape is quite a story. It appears from 
Robley’s statement to me, that, after you and Congo went vour way 
to take the unknown girl to her home, Robley drove down Main 
Street till the water coming into the carriage obliged him to stop, 
and hail two men, who were on an improvised raft of fencing-boards 
and scantlings in the street, to come to his relief. And, of course, 
the raft frightened the horses, when it was pushed up to the car- 
riage ; and it took several minutes for Robley to quiet them. 
Finally, Papa Pearlesteine and Robley got on the raft, leaving Syl- 
vester to hold the horses ; and when the raft came to the door of the 
Merchants Hotel, Robley got off into water up to his waist ; and 
Papa Pearlesteine got the men on the raft to take him across the 
street to Luckhardt’s jewelry store, while Robley would be engaged 
in getting Philemon and me down stairs, and through the foot or 
more of water in the hall, to the front door. 

“ That is the last Robley saw of Sylvester and Papa Pearlesteine ; 
and as Sylvester was right in the way of the van of the flood that 
swept away the big four-story Hulbert House on the one side of him 
and the equally big Swank block on the other, as if they had 
been piles of sand instead of bricks and mortar, the chances are a 
million to one that he was drowned or crushed to death by the fall- 
ing walls and jamming wreckage around him before the mass was 


JANE JANSEN. 


237 


swept across the lower part of Kernville to the mountain- 
side beyond. 

“ The warning whistles began to blow when we were going down 
stairs ; and when we were going through the hall, Robley carrying 
me, and my band-box containing my new hat, in his arms, and 
Philemon wading after us with our grip-sacks, the water suddenly 
rose two or three feet. ‘ Too late ! too late ! ’ cried out Philemon be- 
hind us. ‘ The dam has given way evidently ; and we may as well 
go up stairs again, and wait till the flurry is over. Come, Robley, 
with your dove — you must not put her out with the coming but the 
going of the flood, if you would have her come back with a rhodo- 
dendron branch from the summit of Appalachia.’ 

“ And up the stairs we went again, and a little faster than we had 
come down ; for everybody in the house was running up and down 
and here and there in the wildest excitement. On the second or 
third floor — I do not know exactly which ; for I was too badly 
frightened even to scream ; and I am sure if I had not been with 
Robley, I would have dropped stone dead at the first shriek of the 
locomotives to alarm the people — we got into one of the back 
rooms ; and through a window facing the east, we saw the first great 
wave of the flood strike the city more like a solid wall twenty or 
thirty feet high, beneath a dense black cloud of dust and spray, than 
a rush of water. As it approached us, however, the resemblance to a 
moving wall disappeared, and a divided torrent of waters became 
apparent, more like two great battering-rams than anything I can 
liken them to : the foremost coming almost directly to ward us down 
Clinton Street and leveling and carrying away everything in its 
course ; and the hindmost, away on the other side of the city, fol- 
lowing approximately the course of the Conemaugh, and destroying 
everything in its way similarly. 

“ As the main body of the former swept past us on our right, and 
we heard a succession of thundering crashes in the direction of the 
Hulbert House, we all stepped back from the window and trem- 
blingly cowered against the wall opposite — I know I did, for one. 

“At any rate, scarcely a heart-beat after we got to the wall, the 
eastern side of the Merchants Hotel came thundering down, dip- 
ping to a steep angle the floor we were on, and dumping all 
the furniture and our grip-sacks out into the water, and nearly 
stifling us with dust from the crumbling brick walls and the fall- 
ing plastering. 

“ A moment after, a frame house came drifting past the room-wide 
opening in front of us, and lodged against the ragged side of the 
hotel, presenting to us a garret window invitingly open but the 


238 


JANE JANSEN. 


width of the dipping floor from us. 

“ ‘ Better a frame house that floats and carries us, like a boat, a 
thousand times over, than a brick that comes tumbling down over 
our heads, and sinks like a stone ! ’ ‘ And so say I ; ’ cried out Phile- 
mon and Robley, as soon as the opportunity to escape from the fall- 
ing hotel was presented to them. So, sliding down the steep floor 
against the side of the frame house, we crawled through the window 
into the garret. A few minutes afterward, the house swung around 
into Clinton Street, and away we went across Main and down Bed- 
ford and over Stony Creek and the lower end of Kernville, and then 
up through Kernville to Grubbtown, just ahead of a big building 
Robley thinks must have been Turners Hall, and which I thought 
every minute would strike against our little house and knock 
it to pieces. 

“ At length, after we had started to come back from Grubbtown, 
our house grounded, and falling over partly, imprisoned us in the 
angle of the garret between the floor and the edge of the roof. Hap- 
pily the garret was not plastered and we held on to the rafters, but 
could see no means of escape except in the subsidence of the waters. 
Some time afterward, however, a drifting log knocked several boards 
off the southern gable and we crawled through the hole, Philemon 
first, then myself, and Robley last, just as we happened to be in the 
garret. Then, on account of the driftwood above the hole, we could 
get no farther without swimming around the capsized house, under 
the arch formed by the wreckage piled against it, to the lee side of 
the building on the north. But we could not tell whether or not 
we could get out there, even if we did swim around the house. And 
there we hung undecided what to do, till Philemon dropped into the 
water, saying he would soon see; and away he went through the 
gloomy passage; and that is the last we saw of him. For, about the 
time we were looking for his return, the house fell flat on its side, 
and the whole pile of wreckage above us and about us, and a dozen 
or so of men, women and children, who had climbed upon it, came 
tumbling down into the water around us. 

“ Rohley and I were protected from the falling timbers by the pro- 
jection of the roof beyond the broken gable of the house to which 
we clung; and as soon as an opening appeared in the drifting wreck- 
age around us, Robley made me take hold of a floating door and 
cling to it for dear life, while he, swimming, pushed it toward the 
shore. But just as we got started fairly, I saw a poor woman near 
us, struggling with both her hands to get on a piece of wreckage 
while she held in her teeth the four corners of an apron in which 
was tucked a baby ; and I screamed to him to let me go and save 


JANE JANSEN. 


239 


them. But he would not listen to anything I said; and before I 
knew what he was about, he shoved me against the top of a pine 
tree which projected from the water and compelled me to let go my 
hold of the door and seize the tree ; and as I did so, I floundered 
about it and finally struck something like a stone in the water with 
a pointed top, but on which, by holding to the tree, I could stand 
as firmly as if I had been on solid ground. And what do you think 
it was? You could never guess in a million years! It was a mon- 
ument on somebody’s grave ; for we were in Sandy vale Cemetery ; 
and the tree I was clinging to was an arbor vitse, which, you know, 
is the Tree of Life ! Did you ever hear the like of it ! 

“ Well, while I was standing on the monument holding to the Tree 
of Life, Robley pushed the door to the woman and the baby, and 
succeeded in getting them to a place where the woman could wade 
out without any danger. Then he came back after me and took me 
ashore. And there sat the woman in the mud, holding the corpse of 
the poor baby against her bosom, rocking to and fro, and weeping 
aloud in the most violent grief. The baby had drowned while the 
woman was struggling in the water, probably before Robley got to her. 

“ Now, for the strangest thing of all. Robley got down in the mud, 
and, having taken the baby from the woman, laid it down in the 
mud and worked with it in some way or other, I do not know ex- 
actly how. Then, having wiped out its mouth, he put a corner of 
the apron over it ; and getting down flat in the mud by the little 
thing, he blew his breath into its lungs again and again, and worked 
with it with his hands ; and after a while he started the baby to 
breathe of its own accord ! I never was so astonished at anything 
in my life ! And then, when we got out of the mud on compara- 
tively dry ground, above Hornerstown, the woman fell on her knees 
before Robley and thanked him in the most pathetic manner for re- 
storing the child to life. She said the baby was not hers; but that 
it had been picked up by a number of persons on a floating roof and 
given to her to keep ; and that she had no children and would adopt 
it if the mother should never be found ; 4 and oh, do not ask me my 
name, for I will not tell you, lest you lead somebody to follow me 
and take the dear thing from me; and while I have no milk in 
my bosom to nourish it, I will run twenty miles into the country 
but that I will find a cow to supply the necessary nourishment ! ’ 
And I said to Robley, tell the poor woman ours, and never mind 
hers; and say to her that if ever she or the baby should be in want 
to come to us right away : and Robley did, adding, ‘ Now, take your 
baby and run ! ’ And somehow, Jane, just as the woman started off, 
I wished in my heart I had gotten the dear little thing myself, and 


240 


JANE JANSEN. 


burst into tears. 

“Then, such a time as we had getting here! We struck out, of 
course, for the Frankstown Road ; and in clambering around Green 
Hill above the crowd of excited people there, we started a little ava- 
lanche of loose stones and mud under our feet ; and Robley hal- 
looed to the people below to get out of the way. And what do you 
think ? Another of the strangest things happened. Your two hors- 
es w r ere in the quarry above us ; and recognizing Roblev’s voice, 
they whinnied and came to the edge of the quarry and looked 
down at us. Robley went up to them and taking Bessie by the fore- 
top, led her to the Frankstown Road ; Fannie, with a collar hang- 
ing around her neck, following behind ; and I, lower down on the 
hill, clambering from rock to rock and over one little gully after an- 
other, more like a goat fantastically dressed in a woman’s rig as rag- 
ged and wet and muddy as it could be and hold together, than a 
human being. However, we all got to the Road ; and a woman who 
lived handy in one of the houses on the steep hillside — holding on by 
her toe-nails and eyeteeth, as she expressed it — having given Robley 
a piece of her clothesline, he made a bridle for each of the horses. 

“ Then, Robley set me astride Fannie’s wet bare back — mind you, 
while we were surrounded by twenty-five or thirty men, women, and 
children. So you can imagine my predicament, especially when the 
inevitable bad boy in every company of children began to bawl out, 

‘ Hurry up your cakes, Bill, an’ see city siss ride clothes-pin ! ’ Did 
you ever hear anything so awfully ludicrous ! I laughed and every- 
body laughed ; and the more I laughed, the lower I leaned on Fan- 
nie’s neck and pressed my heels against her sides to hold on ; and 
while Robley was mounting his horse, Fannie, either in a frolic or a 
fright — 1 do not know which — started off on a gallop up the hill; 
and the closer Bessie and Robley came to her heels, the faster the 
vixen ran. Oh, I was scared nearly to death before she stopped 
stock still, and began to nibble grass by the road-side; and such a 
jolting as I got, I never experienced anything like it. And then, just 
to think of the spectacle I must have presented to the breathless 
big-eyed Bill, assuming that he got up to the bad boy’s side, as I 
started off! and the awful destruction of Johnstown going on in the 
valley beneath us ! 

“ Well, some time after dark, I got so sick and sore, I could not and 
I would not go an inch farther ; and I told Robley that he might go 
on to Rhododendron Cottage alone if he pleased, but that I was go- 
ing to lie down by the road-side ; and that I did not care whether I 
died or not. ‘All right,’ he said, and on he went ; and, of course, I 
followed without saying a word. He knew I did not mean what I 


JANE JANSEN. 


241 


said, and that I could endure more than I thought. 

“ At length, seeing a dim light in a window not far from the road, 
Robley got off his horse and felt along the fence for some opening 
to get into it, and found a set of bars, which he let down and we 
went in. And would you believe it, the middle-aged man and wom- 
an who came to the door had not heard a word of the big flood, and 
were engaged in counting their eggs and weighing their butter pre- 
paratory to doing their marketing the next morning in Johnstowm. 
‘And you say, the stores are all destroyed ? 5 asked the woman 
eagerly. ‘Yes.’ ‘Dear me! what will I do with my butter and 
eggs!’ she exclaimed; and I thought I would die! And after a 
while, Robley having explained and described the calamity to the 
good people, the woman trembled all over and the man got so husky 
he scarcely could speak ; and they could not do enough for us. 

“ The woman, who turned out to be Mrs. Marlatt, took me into 
the kitchen and stripped me and washed me like a child. Then she 
dressed me in some of her own clothes which were a mile too big for 
me ; and when she got through with me, I was ready for a fancy 
ball, as you can imagine. At the same time, out in the barn, Mr. 
Marlatt w T as performing the same function for Robley ; and the farm- 
er’s clothing was as much too little for Robley as his wife’s was too 
big for me; and when we all came together in the light in the sit- 
ting room, I giggled of course, and Mr. Marlatt began to laugh and 
ended in coughing, and Mrs. Marlatt put on her spectacles and 
looked at him as if she had never seen him before, remarking, as she 
took them off and laid them on the mantel-piece, ‘ Were it not for 
the buttons on your jacket, Bub, which I sewed on w 7 ith my own 
hands, I would not know you from a side of sole-leather— you have 
outgrown your pap’s clothes amazingly ! ’ And Robley actually 
blushed and was so disconcerted, that he put his hands in his pock- 
ets and looked for all the world like a country-jake from wayback, 
as the boys say. Pretty soon, however, Robley began to laugh, and 
we all laughed ; and ever since, Robley has called me Siss and I have 
called him Bub. Then we had supper and went to bed — Mrs. Mar- 
latt and I sleeping together in her room, and Mr. Marlatt and Robley 
in the spare room. 

“ We were up at daybreak the next morning ; and while Mrs. Mar- 
latt and I were getting breakfast, what do you think ? Robley was so 
ashamed of himself in Mr. Marlatt’s clothes, that he went out to the 
barn and washed his own and brought them into the kitchen and 
hung them up to dry around the stove, saying he would never go out 
of the house again until he was in a suit that did not make him ap- 

EE 


242 


JANE JANSEN. 


pear so supremely ludicrous as bis generous friend’s. As soon as his 
clothing was dry, accordingly, after breakfast, Robley rigged himself 
up in it, and Richard was himself again. Then, having hitched up 
Bessie in Mr. Marlatt’s old-fashioned high-spring buggy — leaving 
Fannie until he should return the buggy and harness — Robley and 
I parted with the Marlatts as if we had been the best of friends all 
our lives, and drove to Rhododendron Cottage. 

“ Here we found everybody in a whirl of excitement and bewil- 
derment, and everything topsyturvy, as you can imagine ; and hour 
after hour, as we learned more and more of the extraordinary dam- 
age to property and destruction of human lives, effected by the 
bauble of pleasure that we had come to play with a while as a fit- 
ting prelude to our happy marriage, we became positively stupefied. 
On reading your letter, however, and learning what you are doing 
already with your wonderful knack of knowing what to do and how 
to do it at all times, Robley and I have concluded to join you in 
your labor of love for the relief of the little ones especially, who in 
their absolute innocence and helplessness are, as you have remarked 
with justice, the chief sufferers for the sins of omission and commis- 
sion of the pleasure-blind builders of the dam above and the busi- 
ness-blind builders of the city below. 

“ Expect us Tuesday evening. With Robley joining in my love 
to you and the hope of my heart that Philemon and Sylvester may 
be among the survivors of the great catastrophe, I remain, 

Yours, affectionately, Grace. 

“ P. S. — Robley has just come in with a list of the dead in which 
your name appears, and Philemon’s and Sylvester’s ; and since you 
have turned up living, he reasons so may they — but shakes his head 
sadly when he recalls the circumstances under which he saw them 
last. Again wishing you the fulfillment of your heart’s desires, I am, 
Yours, etc., G. G. 

“ P. S. — From a knife-cut in Fannie’s collar and the fact that your 
horses are not hurt in any way, and from the place where they were 
found, Robley says you must have cut loose your horses before you 
sought safety in flight ; which is just what you would do and no- 
body else in the world would think of doing in the face of the awful 
flood ; and that you must have been in Bedford Street, or its imme- 
diate neighborhood when the rush came, and might have escaped by 
jumping on the horses and letting them run. But all men are wise 
after the fact ; and the dearest man in the wide, wide world is no 
exception. Yours, etc., G. G. 

“ P. S. — Wonders will never cease! Just now I have been handed 
my new hat in the band-box just as it came from the milliner’s. It 


JANE JANSEN. 


243 


was found exactly in the place I dropped it when the side fell out of 
and the ceiling came down in the room we were in in the Merchants 
Hotel, And just to think ! if we had remained where we were then, 
we would have escaped without so much as a wetting. So, you see, 
if you missed absolute safety by the breadth of a hair, so did we ; 
and the judgment of the wisest of men and women in overwhelming 
catastrophes is no better than none at all. 

“ By the bye, too, Jane, you know there is a great bend in the Con- 
emaugh at the picturesque viaduct you admire so much — somewhere 
between South Fork and Johnstown, no matter exactly. Now, here 
the overflow of the mighty flood from the Fishing Club’s dam swept 
through the railroad cut across the isthmus, a hundred yards 
or so in width ; and having a less distance to go by two miles 
than the main body, it got into Johnstown that much sooner. 
This is what occasioned the sudden rise of two or three feet in the 
water in Johnstown, while we were in the hall ; and Robley thinks 
we could have waded thence to the Frankstown Road easily in the 
time it took the main body of the overwhelming flood to come the 
two miles it was behind the overflow. He thinks also that this first 
wave is that which induced you to get out of your carriage and cut 
loose your horses. Howsoever, by driving us and everybody else in 
the city up stairs, this overflow was undoubtedly the means of sav- 
ing the lives of thousands. G. G. 

“ P. S. — For the fortieth time, and positively the last. I forgot to 
tell you of a fortunate occurrence that facilitated our escape from 
Sandyvale Cemetery. When all the floating houses and wreckage 
began to drift down to Johnstown again, the backwater fell rapidly ; 
and, to a great extent, the flood coming down Stony Creek kept in 
its proper channel and left the overflowed region to the east compar- 
atively shallow and free from danger. And now that I have written 
this, I do wish from the bottom of my heart, I had not. For that 
which was fortunate to Robley and me was most unfortunate to 
Philemon, separating him from us and carrying him down stream 
again. Ten thousand kisses and hopes for the best. G. G.” 


XLVI. 

At the appointed time Grace and Robley came and entered into 
the work of our little company at once — Grace with her usual en- 
thusiasm modified to earnestness and persistency, and Robley with a 
colorless seriousness in his handsome manly face I had never ob- 


244 


JANE JANSEN. 


served before. Grace insisted on learning to milk at once; and 
while she took my place in stripping Golden, the gentlest of my 
cows, I took Robley up stairs and presented him to ’Squire Burk- 
holder, remarking as I left them together, “ By putting the ’Squire 
on his feet again, you will add a hundred men to our little band act- 
uated and guided by a heart and head of corresponding size — a 
Briareos whom mankind will not call iEgseon as of old, but the good 
’Squire of Johnstown to the end of time : so do your best, iEscu- 
lapius, with the blood that coursed in the veins of the right side of 
Medusa, and fail not, lest to your eternal disgrace witchcraft come 
down the chimney when science goes out at the door, and succeed 
in effecting a cure by the mysterious means which only witch- 
craft knows.” 

“And that of the Arch Witch of the Heart of Appalachia in par- 
ticular, you wily woman — you witch of witches if ever there was one 
in the world ! ” exclaimed my enthusiastic friend, as I hurried 
down the stairs. 

I found at the gate awaiting me Yalu and Zambie, with Robley’s 
spring-wagon heavily laden with clothing and provisions which the 
good people of the mountain in the neighborhood of the Heart of 
Appalachia had accumulated and sent to me for distribution among 
the destitute. And the supply came not a moment too soon ; for 
the number of refugees about the house and barn of ’Squire Burk- 
holder had exhausted almost wholly his stores of food and clothing. 
There was a hint involved in the fresh supply, moreover, which Rob- 
ley and I were quick to take. That was for Yalu to make regular 
trips between the two places and supply us with food which could 
be purchased cheaply in the mountain villages ; or that failing, could 
be obtained as a last resort from our herds and pens of full-blooded 
live-stock. 

And so in the midst of the great operations for the relief of the 
survivors of the Johnstown Flood in the Valley of the Conemaugh — 
in which the thousands coming to relieve frequently found them- 
selves as sorely in need as the most destitute of the sufferers — our 
little company, which was known among ourselves as the Burk- 
holder Relief Corps, quietty performed its special work in the out- 
skirts of the desolated region where the infantile sufferers chiefly 
were to be found in crowded garrets, sheds, and tents, and frequently 
by the roadside, beyond the limits of the labors of the infinitely 
greater associations of the great cities of the country, the railroad 
companies, the charitable organizations, the churches, and the State. 

In despite of the exacting and engrossing nature of my occupation, 
however, I was affected by these great operations of others going on 


.TAME JANSEN. 


245 


around me, especially by those conducted by Mr. William Flinn, or 
Dynamite Bill, as he was known familiarly, for the removal of the 
acres of solidified wreckage in an about the channel of the river 
above the Stone Bridge. With an army of six thousand men, drawn 
at once from the quarries, public improvements, and other works of 
the great contracting firm of Pittsburgh, Booth & Flinn, equipped 
with the most powerful hoists and tackle, and supplied with seem- 
ingly unlimited quantities of dynamite for blasting and petroleum 
for burning that which was combustible, this energetic and com- 
manding man attacked the compacted conglomeration, which in- 
cluded railroad locomotives, iron bridges, passenger and freight 
cars, tracks, tons upon tons of wire from the ruined mills above, 
machinery of all kinds, stones, bricks, houses, trees, furniture, miles 
of telegraph wires, store-goods, horses, cows, dogs, hogs, sheep, cats, 
and human beings — in fine, much of everything to be found in the 
great industrial valley ; and in a few days time, by the discharge of 
quarter of a ton blasts of dynamite in advantageous places, he began 
to make the removal of the stupendous mass, which seemed to defy 
any agency known to man, a possibility. 

By chance, I witnessed the first of these blasts, which may be 
likened not inappropriately to an explosive volcanic eruption — saw 
the cascade of a myriad of fragments of the miscellaneous mass, and 
felt the shock that shattered like an earthquake brick walls on the 
mountain side half a mile distant. Immediately afterward, I en- 
gaged with the throng in inspecting the fragments scattered over a 
great area; and hearing a boy near me pronounce the name “ Syl- 
vester Holland,” I turned and saw that he was reading the name on 
a small object which he held in his hand. This proved to be the 
lid of Sylvester’s gold watch, having beneath his name the subscrip- 
tion, “From J. J.” — that is, from Jules Jerome, his maternal 
grandfather. 

The boy took the relic, as I directed him, to the official repository 
in Alma Hall, where it was registered, and afterward given to me ; 
and ever afterward, I felt a shudder in my heart with every blast I 
heard, and in my excited imagination, saw the form of Philemon 
rise in the upheaval of wreckage and part and pass into a shower of 
fragments indistinguishable from the infinity with which they were 
commingled ! 

At the end of ten days, ’Squire Burkholder was well enough to 
hobble on crutches about the house and over the farm, and relieved 
Robley and myself of much of our exacting labor there. At the 
same time, however, Mr. Smith succumbed to the unusual work and 
exposure, and with symptoms of typhoid fever, was sent by Robley’s 


246 


JANE JANSEN. 


advice to the Hospital on Prospect Hill; to the great distress of all, 
but especially the good ’Squire, who had begun to call him his son. 
and “ the making of as good a man as ever his father was, if not so 
big and brawny.” 

Soon afterward, I became aware that I was breaking down, more 
from the solicitude of Robley for my welfare than from any sensa- 
tion of sickness or suffering which I felt. I was conscious, however, 
that I had lost my appetite and was apathetic in the presence of dis- 
tress, and unmoved by the most shocking sights in the excavations 
made in every part of the ill-fated city and at the morgues ; but I 
was strong enough to go my accustomed rounds among the grateful 
little children morning and evening, and visit the hospitals, 
morgues, and information bureaus in the spare hours of the fore and 
afternoon. 

At length, late in the evening of Thursday, the 20th day of June, 
Robley came to me and said, in a tone of voice that affected me 
more than his words, that it was an imperative duty for him as a 
physician and friend to take me home at once; that I was pale and 
haggard and wasted, and would fall an easy prey to the prevailing 
fever of a malignant type which was threatening to become a 
scourge and the most serious obstacle yet encountered in cleansing 
the city of its thousands upon thousands of tons of disease-breeding 
filth, and relieving the sufferers under such sanitary conditions in 
midsummer as excited the fears of all physicians. “ To-morrow r 
morning early, Yalu will return with the empty wagon ; and you 
must go with him and remain at home until you have regained your 
health and vigor — or, at any rate, until you have learned that you 
are not infected with the malignant fever that has become almost 
epidemic here. Do not say no, for I will not heed it; nor will either 
Grace or your grand friend the ’Squire, w r ho join me in saying that 
when you are well we are your slaves, but when you are sick, w T e are 
your master.” 

“ Not to-morrow, Robley. And when you recall the day, you will 
yield without a word. Let Yalu remain until Saturday morning and 
I will return with him to meet whatsoever there is in store for me in 
the future as bravely and uncomplainingly as my powers of endur- 
ance will permit — to the end.” 

The morrow was Friday, the 21st day of June, the day which the 
four of us had named with one voice, in the heyday of our happi- 
ness, our wedding day, and gave as a satisfactory reason to all con- 
cerned that only the longest day of the year could hold our infinity 
of heart-beats of bliss. 

The good man turned w r ith tears standing in his eyes, and went 


JANE JANSEN. 


247 


away from me, with uncertain steps. Afterward, through the open 
door, I heard him speak in an undertone to Grace and the ’Squire ; 
but what he said, I can infer alone. Whatsoever, however, when 
Grace and I went to bed, the tender-hearted girl lovingly put her 
arms around me and held me close to her bosom throughout 
the night. 


XLVII. 

A sad silence pervaded the house and farm of ’Squire Burkholder 
the following morning. I affected to be cheerful ; but my heart 
failed me when I found no response, and I became as silent as 
those around me. 

In the morning, after visiting all my little friends in the division 
of the territory allotted to me, I sent Yoko back to the ’Squire’s with 
the empty buckets, and spent the morning in the hospital writing a 
letter for Mr. Smith to his wife and children in Pittsburgh, and the 
afternoon in Sandy vale Cemetery, as nearly as I could determine in 
the very place where I had seen Philemon last. There was a fasci- 
nation about the spot which I could not resist ; and I had visited it 
so often during the past three weeks, that insensibly I came to re- 
gard it as the special sepulchre in the vast columbarium of the Con- 
emaugh Valley in which the body of my beloved was entombed. 

In the evening, I went out with Zambie — he carrying the buckets 
of milk, and I a basket containing my supper ; for, before returning, 
I desired to visit the morgue and see the several bodies which I 
heard at the ’Squire’s had been found during the day in a remark- 
able state of preservation in a cellar filled with sand in the lower 
part of Johnstown : I still had a spark of hope left that I might 
find the body of Philemon, and be able to identify it and have it 
buried, if his friends in England would permit, in the sacred enclos- 
ure that contained the remains of my maternal grandparents, my 
parents, my brother, and Congo. 

On the way to the morgue, however, I missed Zambie from my 
side; and having observed him several times when passing casting a 
longing eye toward a crowd of laughing men and boys who had as- 
sembled about a sail-like spread of canvas between two upright 
poles, in the sandy waste in the upper part of the city, I suspected 
that he had gone thither to satisfy his childish curiosity and get a 
stolen relief in a few minutes of boisterous glee from the dreary 
monotony of carrying milk from one week’s end to another, I turned 


248 


JANE JANSEN. 


in the direction of the unknown sport : musing, as I trudged along 
wearily in the sand, on the hardening effects of familiarity with the 
horrible and ghastly, and the resilience of youth and health in a 
little while, from utter destitution amid the indiscriminate wreckage 
of a deluged city, to rollicking sport. 

When I came to the crowd, I looked up and saw over the shoul- 
ders of those in front of me, the words “ Hit the Coon ! ” painted in 
big letters above a circular opening in the centre of the canvas, and 
u Five shots for a Nickel,” in similar letters beneath ; and projecting 
from the hole in the centre, the head of Zambie — the woolly crown 
and the grinning face of the big negro boy alternately presented to 
my view as he lowered his head to receive the balls as they were 
thrown at him on his least vulnerable part, the top of his head, and 
amuse all with his winks and grins of the most contagious good 
humor as he turned up his face to acknowledge either a hit ora miss 
alike. The sport seemed harmless enough, and irresistibly laugh- 
able to everybody in the crowd but myself, to whom it was inde- 
scribably painful. 1 realized that the big country bumpkin had 
been inveigled into taking the place of the experienced negro in 
dodging the balls thrown at him, and that, soon or late, he would re- 
ceive a ball on his nose, in his mouth, or in his eye, which would 
turn his grins of pleasure into grimaces of pain, and reward his 
tricksters for their trouble with a new lease of laughter. And 
scarcely had I formulated this thought, than lowering his head at a 
feint made by the thrower and turning up his grinning face immedi- 
ately after, the simple boy received the ball on his flat nose w T ith 
such force, as to knock his head back through the opening and 
make him bellow with pain like a bull-calf, amid a shout of laugh- 
ter from the crowd of men and boys that made me shudder. I has- 
tened around the throng to the back of the canvas and rescued the 
bawling boy from the hands of his deceitful sport-loving captors. 
Then, as I was about to lead him away, he raised another laugh by 
looking around for his hat which had been hidden ; a third, when he 
picked up his buckets and found them filled with sand ; and still a 
fourth, when, on emptying the buckets, he found his hat stuffed in 
the bottom of one. 

At another time and place, in my usual health and spirits, when I 
found the overgrown savage baby was more frightened than hurt, I 
might have laughed as lustily as any in the throng ; but weary al- 
most to the point of exhaustion, in the lowest stage of despondency, 
and harrowed at heart, on this most mournful mission to the very 
vortex of the horrors of the vast sepulchre of Johnstown, the 
morgue, I saw and heard and led the boy away more like a machine 


JANE JANSEN. 


249 


than a human being of flesh and blood. 

Having come to the morgue, I saw at a glance that none of the 
several bodies recently exhumed bore the slightest resemblance to 
Philemon; and giving way under this last feather of disappointment, 
I sat down on a coffin in a state of stupefaction ; while Zambie, as I 
afterward learned, sat down a short distance from me on one of his 
upturned buckets, blubbering, and wiping the trickling blood from 
his nose betimes with the sleeve of his blue jean shirt. 

After a while, I was conscious of the approach of a poor old wo- 
man leading a partially paralyzed and extremely emaciated blind 
man, with the upper part of his face covered by a thick green 
veil, whom I had seen daily for the past week about the morgue, and 
heard the people around me talk about familiarly as Poor Billy 
Blind-staggers, with that strange combination of pathos and the 
most ghastly bathos or horse-play everywhere to be found amid the 
ruins of the flood-swept city. I saw her seat the wretched wreck 
with great care and tenderness on a rough-box a few yards in front 
of me, and then come to the coffin on which I sat and sit down by 
my side. I heard her sigh and say, “ I am very tired and hungry. 
Please, Miss, if you have a bite in your basket to spare, I beg of you 
to give to me, to share with my dear charge in front of us who is 
wasting away from day to day, happily blind and demented, that he 
can neither see nor comprehend the awful misery he is in himself 
and surrounded by in this horrible Valley of Death.” 

I opened the basket and gave her the supper I had prepared for 
myself. I saw her take the chicken-leg which constituted the 
greater part of the meal, and put it in the uncertain grasp of her 
poor charge and guide it to his mouth, until she set the jerking 
automaton to eat himself; and I saw her take the bread which 
constituted the smaller part, and eat it with avidity as she resumed 
hei* seat by my side. 

I heard her say, “ I thank you, Miss ; that will give us a new 
lease of life — until to-morrow, perhaps; ” but I heard without heed- 
ing : I had heard so many tales of exceeding sorrow and distress, 
the fountain of emotional response within me was exhausted. 

But the woman continued to speak as she sat by my side, and I 
continued to hear with no more feeling than a phonograph. “ You 
see my dear charge there is more like a dead man than a living. He 
floated on a telegraph-pole all the way from Johnstown to Blairs- 
ville — twenty-seven miles, I believe— where he was rescued and 
brought to my house by my only son, Thomas, who, on returning to 
the river to rescue more of the sufferers screaming for help as they 

FF 


250 


JANE JANSEN, 


were swept past the town during that terrible night, was drowned in 
the flood himself, and his body never recovered, 

“ The doctors say the base of his brain is injured ; and that he 
will never recover the right use of his limbs and his mind, without 
an operation of the gravest character, which they, not knowing the 
poor man and not being able to find out who he is, are unwilling to 
perform and assume all the responsibility. Oh, my heart is nearly 
broken to find out who he is ; and I have sacrificed all the little I 
possess in the world as the widow of David Wadsworth — who, I am 
sorry to say, though a good man was given to drink and died be- 
queathing only his appetite for liquor to his son Thomas, and his 
debts to me — to bring him here, where people come from all parts 
of the country to identify the dead, that his identity may be discov- 
ered. Oh, I believe I should die for very joy if somebody would 
come and name him ; for I can tell from his hands that he has never 
been obliged to work ; and from his scarless body that he was not 
addicted to drink and involved in frequent quarrels, or meeting with 
daily accidents like my husband and son ; and from the shreds of 
clothing hanging to his almost naked bod}' when he was found, that 
he wore tailor-made clothes cut in the latest fashion ; and especially 
from the expression of his lovely blue eyes, which though sightless 
and divergent are apparently uninjured, ( and which, to let people 
know that he is blind, I keep veiled during the day,) that he is 
an educated man of thought and feeling of a higher order than 
either David Wadsworth or his son Thomas, who, as I said before, 
were good men but woefully intemperate.” 

When the woman spoke of the lovely blue eyes behind the dark 
green veil, I lifted my eyes and scrutinized from head to foot the 
emaciated figure in ill-fitting garments sitting on the rough-box in 
front of me ; and fancying I discerned in the disjointed shadowy fig- 
ure a resemblance to Philemon in a similar condition of nervous dis- 
organization and muscular waste, I was aroused from my stupor suf- 
ficiently to request the woman to remove the veil and let me see his 
eyes, adding, that the veil over the upper part of his face and a 
three weeks’ growth of beard on the lower hid his features to such 
an extent that recognition was impossible. 

The woman, standing between me and the miserable man, re- 
moved the veil, and stepped aside ; and looking into the face of Poor 
Billy Blind -staggers, I saw and recognized, as in the revealing but 
bewildering light of a streak of lightning, the features of Phil- 
emon Holland ! 

My blood ran cold ; my brain burned and my eyes blazed in their 
sockets ; my bosom began to swell, and I felt an oppressive sensation 


JANE JANSEN. 


251 


of choking in my throat ; but otherwise I sat motionless and insensi- 
ble as a stone. 

An instant later, my eyes staring but seeing no more than the 
blind before them, I saw in my imagination my heart-broken 
mother, as I had beheld her often in life, stand before the wretched 
wreck of my poor father, and the more pitiful shadow of humanity 
in my wan and wasted and hopelessly crippled brother, and smile, 
while she ministered unto them ; until both she and they faded from 
my vision. 

I rose to my feet. I bowed my head in resignation to the awful 
future before me. I staggered to the jerking, swaying form before 
me. I took his hands in mine ; and the instant I felt they were liv- 
ing flesh and blood, I kissed them and bathed them with my tears 
till I sank insensible at his feet 

When I awoke to consciousness, I was lying on a rough-box sur- 
rounded by a sympathetic group of men and women, one of the lat- 
ter of whom was bathing my forehead and displaying the patch of 
white hairs on my brow to the group, remarking as she did so, ‘‘She 
was born a woman, to feel and endure as only a woman can. Be- 
hold this blazon of blight on her brow. When the heart is har- 
rowed, youth becomes age and the blackest of hair becomes as w T hite 
as the driven snow.” 

“ Where is Zambie ? ” I enquired, as I rose to a sitting posture. 

The woman, who had been bathing my brow and talking, pointed 
to Philemon, still sitting as I had seen him before I fainted at 
his feet. 

“ Oh, no, not he — not he ; but the big black boy that carried my 
buckets of milk, that he may run to ’Squire Burkholder’s and bring 
Dr. Benham here, with his spring-wagon to remove the poor man, 
and his most faithful attendant in this dear old tender-hearted wo- 
man, to a place where they will receive the best of nursing and care 
which their condition demands.” 

“ I will go in his stead,” responded several volunteers among 
the men. 

“ It is not necessary,” said the woman who had taken charge of 
me in my insensibility. “ As soon as the negro boy saw that you 
had identified one who was believed to be dead in this wretched be- 
ing, he said he would run and tell Dr. Benham ; and away he ran as 
fast as his long strong legs could carry him.” 

I w T as satisfied ; and having waited an hour perhaps, in which 
time I regained my composure and determined on a course of action, 
Robley came in such a state of excitement as to incapacitate him 
from doing anything without the guidance of a less disturbed mind ; 


252 


JANE JANSEN. 


and in a short time, after thanking the sympathetic people who had 
gathered around me and assisted me, I was on my way toward the 
good ’Squire’s, with my arm around the wreck of Philemon Holland 
on the back seat of the wagon, w T hile the happy old woman, Mrs. 
Wadsworth, sat on the front with Robley. 


XLVIII. 

Dr. Postlewaite, by chance, happened to be at Rudolf’s Roost when 
Zambie brought the news of the discovery of Philemon and was in- 
duced by the ’Squire to remain and give him the benefit of his wis- 
dom and skill as a physician and surgeon ; and on our arrival, the 
ponderous old doctor, Robley, and the ’Squire took charge of Phile- 
mon ; while tender-hearted Grace, with innumerable kisses, conduc- 
ted me up stairs and put me to bed ; and Mother Gertrude per- 
formed the same kind offices to Mrs. Wadsworth, in whom she 
found a schoolmate of thirty or thirty-five y'ears before at the Blairs- 
ville Seminary, and perhaps the most beautiful and intelligent of the 
eighty young ladies then in attendance. 

I slept profoundly the early part of the night, but tumbled and 
tossed with disturbing dreams the remainder ; and when I arose and 
began to dress, I became so faint I was obliged to lie down for a few 
minutes again. I was able to go down stairs in a little while, how- 
ever, holding to the balustrade, and found Robley’s spring-wagon in 
readiness for the removal of Philemon and myself to the Heart of 
Appalachia. 

To my enquiries about Philemon, Robley said that he was in a 
better condition to endure the journey to our mountain home than 
he had been the evening before to bear the trip from the morgue to 
the ’Squire’s, and that it was necessary to place him in the best san- 
itary condition at the earliest moment possible.” 

“ Is there any hope of his recovery' ? ” 

“ Whatsoever there is lies in an immediate constitutional treat- 
ment to build up his body, by giving him the most invigorating air 
of the mountain tops to breathe, and the most assimilable food to 
eat, while a healthy action is given to the divers parts of his body 
by bathing, friction, active and passive exercise, and carefully con- 
sidered medication.” 

“ What is the matter with him ? ” 

“ My dear Jane, during the night, I have been in consultation with 
Dr. Postlewaite, and an eminent surgeon from Philadelphia, Dr. 


JANE JANSEN. 


253 


Ogleby, and with differences of degree, extent, and gravity, we are 
unanimous in our diagnosis and general treatment ; but our deter- 
mination can be expressed only in technical terms, and you would 
not comprehend his condition a whit better after hearing it than be- 
fore. Suffice it, in the most accurate language I can employ which 
has any signification to you, in the great exhaustion of his body, in- 
cident to his prolonged exertion and immersion, the more watery 
parts of his blood have had a tendency to escape through the walls 
of the arteries and veins and capillaries into the loose tissues around 
them ; and the rapid, frequent, and doubtless oftentimes violent, 
movements of his head and neck in his efforts to breathe, while 
clinging for so many hours to the telegraph-pole in the raging river, 
have caused this escape to take place into the soft tissues and so- 
called ventricles in the lower part of the brain ; and by pressure, and 
otherwise, the effusion benumbs and disturbs the several important 
parts of his nervous system which are situated there and have inti- 
mate association and connection with practical^ every part of his 
body. The seat of this little flood — if I may term it so, in contra- 
distinction to the Great Flood of Johnstown, of which it is a sequel 
— is beyond the realm of any instrument yet devised by the ingenu- 
ity and skill of surgery ; and the only thing that can be done is to 
promote the absorbtion of the watery fluid into the blood again be- 
fore the parts of the nervous system involved shall become soft and 
disorganized ” — 

“ In which event ? ” 

“ They will be incapable of performing their function.” 

“ And the silent sufferer melt away to an end ? ” 

“ Even so.” 

“ Let us set out at once, then, in the one direction in which 
there is hope.” 

Robley went out of the room ; and lowering my head to lay it on 
my arm on the little table in the room, I saw a sheet of paper on 
which, during the night, he had recorded the evidences on which he 
and his fellow-surgeons had come to their conclusion ; and getting 
from them a new insight into the mystery of all mysteries — the art 
of divining the secrets of the very sanctum sanctorum of life, and 
especially that particular life in which my being was involved — and 
a gratifying proof of the intelligent interest taken in my behalf by 
Robley, I folded the paper and put it in my pocket for preservation 
and future study. 

In the peculiar condition of my mind, however, I could not ban- 
ish the contents of the paper from my mind ; and over and over 
again as we drove slowly home — Robley and Grace on the front seat, 


254 


JANE JANSEN. 


and Mrs. Wadsworth and I, with Philemon between us, on the hind 
— they recurred in varying sequences and in more or less fragmen- 
tary parts, but always terminating in the same technical phrase- 
ology which I presume involved to the understanding of a surgeon 
the discourse of Robley to me. At length, the recorded symptoms 
assumed the shape of lettered leaves lying before the cavern of the 
Cumjean Sibyl, who, indistinctly seen in the depths of her subter- 
ranean abode had a shadowy resemblance to Robley ; and as I ap- 
proached I read, “ Strabismus and fixed stare, with pupil rather di- 
lated ” on one ; “ Staggering in reeling arcs, rather than in tangents ” 
on another ; “ Pulse slow, soft, and compressible, irregular and 
changeable in rhythm” on a third; “Tongue, pale and flabby, 
slightly livid, impeded and tremulous” on a fourth ; “ Emaciated and 
anaemic ” on a fifth ; “ General ansethesia ” on a sixth, and so on, on 
the leaves singly ; while on them all together, I read, “ Effusion into 
the third and fourth ventricles and the subarachnoid spaces.” Pres- 
ently, then, the wind would scatter the leaves and I with infinite 
worry would gather and arrange them again, only to have them scat- 
tered and gathered in turn, indefinitely. 

And the greatest relief I experienced in meeting the dear ones at 
home, from whom I had been separated seemingly for as many years 
as weeks, was in breaking up this distressing train of thought in my 
feverish brain. 


XLIX. 

A week afterward, I felt as well as ever, and Robley pronounced 
me free from any of the symptoms of the fever which had assumed 
a malignant form in the Valley of the Conemaugh, and which he re- 
garded justly with great dread ; and I devoted myself to the care of 
Philemon, who had been improving from the moment he received 
proper food and attention at the hands of Robley, and inspired a 
hope in all of ultimate recovery. 

At the end of six weeks, he could walk without staggering and ar- 
ticulate distinctly ; but his mind was beclouded still, his hearing 
dull, and his eyesight an absolute blank ; and at the end of three 
months, in the latter part of September, he had regained the use in 
a great measure of his intellectual faculties, while his hearing was 
improved greatly, and his sense of sight not at all : his eyes ap- 
pearing to be uninjured in any way and free from the strabis- 
mus which intensified his ghastly appearance so much at the 


JANE JANSEN. 


255 


time of his identification. 

In the meantime, I had been in correspondence with his greatly 
distressed grandfather, Jules Jerome, and his heart-broken mother, in 
England, with a view to his removal thither at the earliest opportu- 
nity that he might be examined by the most experienced of the sur- 
geons of London, and derive all the benefits possible at their hands 
in the way of restoring his sight. The time had come now, when he 
could travel safely with Mrs. Wadsworth at his side, whom he re- 
garded as a second mother and on whom his grandfather and mother 
had showered so many gifts of money and clothing, in token of their 
grateful appreciation of the incommensurable services rendered Phil- 
emon in his ipost miserable condition of absolute helplessness, that 
the good woman was bewildered in their contemplation; and it was 
agreed on by the four of us once more in a happy congress assem- 
bled, that Robley should accompany Philemon and Mrs. Wadsworth 
to New York and see them safely aboard the most luxuriously ap- 
pointed of the new Cunarders. However, while Robley was writing 
to the steamship company to secure the most fitting accommoda- 
tions, Philemon interposed a wish that he might see — forgetting for 
the moment his blindness — Grace and Robley married before he 
went away. I added the wish of my heart to his; and the happy 
pair revealed a mutual yearning to the same end by blushing 
in silence. 

Under all the circumstances, after the subject had been broached 
and discussed, however, it was deemed best for Grace and Robley to 
return to Idavoll and be married there in such form as would be 
most agreeable to her father and mother. Then, after coming back 
to the Heart of Appalachia, they could accompany Philemon to 
New York, and after seeing him embark, make a tour of the eastern 
cities if they saw fit, or return to supervise the completion of their 
beautiful mountain home, Rosenborg. 

This was done ; and the last of October, 1889, saw Philemon and 
Mrs. Wadsworth safely landed in England, and myself in the best of 
health and spirits in the Heart of Appalachia entertaining two of 
my most highly prized friends, the Good ’Squire of Johnstown, Ru- 
dolf Burkholder, and my first assistant in supplying milk to the 
little sufferers of the great flood — formerly, Zmytte, the photog- 
rapher of Pittsburgh, synonymous with Enterprise, Originality, and 
Bedrock Prices, now Lycurgus Smith, the superintendent of the 
large farm of the good old ’Squire and the prospective inheritor of a 
goodly share of his estate : and so changed in his personal appear- 
ance since his recovery, having acquired a fresh healthy complexion, 
a new growth of lustrous hair, and an increase in weight of fifty 


256 


JANE JANSEN. 


pounds at least, that I looked at him a second time before I was 
sure of his identity. 


L. 

During the following six months, as week succeeded week, and 
letter followed letter from Philemon indicating increasing vigor of 
mind and body without any appreciable change for the better in the 
condition of his organs of vision, I realized, with increasing concern 
and solicitude, the necessity of enlarging my business to meet the 
possible and probable demands of the future. I planned and 
schemed to make every inch of the mountain tract and every room 
in the wayside inn yield the greatest possible revenue, in addition to 
what I might make, as my mother had done before me, as an artist, 
with less skill than my mother, but with more imagination, a freer 
and stronger hand, and a wider business acquaintance. In doing so, 
not to be misled, I deemed my future husband practically a depen- 
dent whose assistance in divers ways would balance the exactions of 
his existence in a condition of comfort consistent with his culture 
and situation in life, and I made a liberal allowance for the mainte- 
nance of a growing family of my own. In the end, I was satisfied 
that the future presented no more serious difficulties in the way of 
living comfortably and happily than the present ; and with the hap- 
piest of hearts, in response to the repeated solicitations of Philemon, 
I named our second wedding day the anniversary of our first, the 
twenty-first day of June, the fateful day in which by the merest 
accident I discovered him in the unknown wreck of the Johnstown 
Flood, Poor Billy Blind-staggers. 

At length, however, during a visit of Robley and Grace to the for- 
mer’s father and mother in Baltimore, when I was floating above the 
earth in an atmosphere of expectant bliss perfumed with the breath 
of the sweetest flowers of spring, a woman, in destitution, and with 
distressing symptoms of fever, carrying a babe, sixteen or eighteen 
months old, came to the Heart of Appalachia and begged, in the ab- 
sence of Dr. Benham to whom she had come for aid, that I would 
give her food and shelter until his return. 

I had my hat on mv head, when the poor woman addressed me ; 
and taking it off as I preceded her to a comfortable room, she saw 
the white spot above my forehead as I turned at the door, and recog- 
nized me with so much emotion that I doubt not her fever was ag- 
gravated greatly by it. 


JANE JANSEN. 


257 


“ You have saved our lives once, good woman ; and you will save 
them again! How fortunate I am in my misfortune; and how 
happy I am in my misery! And you will not betray me and take 
from me the very child you put into my arms for safe keeping ? Oh, 
no, no, no ; you will never sever and make strangers of those whom 
your goodness of heart has made mother and child ! ” 

From the first sentence she uttered, I suspected the identity of the 
woman and the babe as those I had taken on the raft while in the 
maelstrom of Kernville and whom afterward Robley and Grace had 
taken ashore in Sandyvale Cemetery ; and I was right in my sur- 
mise, as I learned, beyond the possibility of a doubt, from her ac- 
count of the restoration of the babe by Robley which corresponded 
with that given by Grace. 

I sent for Dr. Mansfield ; and the good old physician responding to 
my summons at once, the poor woman was found to be suffering 
with enteritis which simulated typhoid fever, and unquestionably 
would be seriously ill for a week or ten days with the best of 
treatment. 

She was put to bed accordingly and the babe given into the hands 
of Cora, the good woman who had nursed me in infancy so carefully 
and tenderly ; and I sat down by the bed to assure the sick woman 
by my presence that she might trust to us to take the best care pos- 
sible of herself and the child. 

The following day, the poor woman, affected by my attention to 
her, burst into tears ; and after I had wiped her face repeatedly and 
begged her to be calm, she settled her head on the pillow and said, 
“ You do not ask me who I am, or what; and fearful that you may 
at any moment, when I cannot tell you, I can endure the suspense 
no longer. A stranger I came to you and a stranger let me go from 
you, over the hills and far away, or to the grave. My husband is 
dead — x saw him crushed in the flood, and my name has appeared 
in the list of the dead of Johnstown, and the body of another has 
been identified as mine. I have no relatives of my own blood — and 
no friends among the relatives of my husband, an old widower, 
when I, his housekeeper, married him. Several of my step-children 
I have never seen. They do not know me, nor I them. They are 
satisfied — perhaps happy ; and they should not be apprised of the 
truth, to grieve again. With respect to the child, I know nothing 
more than you. And should I survive this illness, I have only one 
wish that you permit me to go as I came, to be a good mother to the 
dear babe that has made life a priceless treasure to me ; and should 
I not survive, that you will be a mother to the child in my stead.” 

GG 


258 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ If none appear, who have a natural claim to the child, I certainly 
will do all in my power to make a worthy man of him and be happy 
in doing so at whatsoever cost to myself in care and work.” 

“ That is medicine to my mind which you alone, in the absence of 
Dr. Benham and his wife, can administer with a happy effect. Now 
let the pills and potions of Dr. Mansfield take charge of my body 
and kill or cure, I am content.” 

From day to day, the unknown woman sank, and her death be- 
came inevitable in the course of the next. 

The next came ; and the sinking woman having signified to me, 
by an expression of the face which I had learned to interpret as 
correctly as her words, that she wished to see the babe, I went 
down stairs as noiselessly as possible to bring the rosv-cheeked 
child to her. 

On my way through the hall, I observed my mail in the rack and 
brought it along with me, to read while the sick woman would be 
interested in the babe; and when I entered the room, I found her 
asleep; and not wishing to disturb her, I took the child into an ad- 
joining room, and set him on the floor to play with the flowers in 
the carpet while I read my letters. 

The first I opened was in a large official envelope, and read as 
follows : — 

“ Greenesburgh, Pa., 3 April, 1890. 

“ Miss Jane Jansen, 

Laughlinstown P. 0., Westm’d Co., Pa. 

“ Dear Miss : — I beg to congratulate you on a piece of good for- 
tune which has happened to you, of which I perhaps am the only 
person living who knows the facts. About a year ago, Phineas Dob- 
son and his wife Matilda, in her right, consulted me about the valid- 
ity of their claim to the tract of mountain land which you and your 
aunt occupy and hold in common as the heirs at law of Alexander 
Graham, deceased. On examination, I was surprised to find that 
the title to the land was indisputably in Mrs. Dobson, as the accom- 
panying abstract will reveal to you ; and a few days before the 
Johnstown Flood, I had all the necessary papers drawn to dispossess 
you and your aunt by an action in ejectment. It so happened, how- 
ever, that, on the fatal Friday, Mr. and Mrs. Dobson were visiting 
friends in Johnstown and were drowned. Their bodies have been 
identified positively and buried by friends of Mr. Dobson. This 
seemingly ended the matter ; and I was about to write you the letter 
I write to-day, when I learned that a child had been born to Mrs. 
Dobson about six months before the Flood. If the child survived 
the parents, the title vested in it ; and I set out to find it among the 


JANE JANSEN. 


259 


living or dead of Johnstown. The identification of the infant 
seemed to he hopeless at first ; but having found the physician who 
officiated at the birth of the child, Dr. Wallace McLea, I learned 
from him, and secured an affidavit from him to the truth of his 
statement, that at the time of birth he observed a curious malforma- 
tion which would be persistent and furnish a means of absolute 
identification, living or dead. This consisted of a deflection to the 
right of the several terminal joints of the backbone, which anato- 
mists consider the remains of a caudal appendage ; and howsoever 
serious the matter, involving as it did the dispossession of two most 
estimable ladies from a valuable estate and the repossession of an in- 
fantile rightful heir, it became so ludicrous to me that I could prose- 
cute it only by allowing myself now and then in secret a few min- 
utes of unrestrained laughter. All the statutes of the State of Penn- 
sylvania to the contrary notwithstanding, the land in question be- 
came an estate tail; and in my facetious visions, a chain of title be- 
came a string of monkeys holding one to another’s tail, up, up, up, 
to a supporting limb of the sturdy old oak of our Commonwealth. 
Then came a series of punning allusions to the Lost Tales of Mile- 
tus, the Tales of a Grandfather, a Pashaw of Many Tails, a Tale of 
a Tub, etc., etc. — sufficient to disgust me with punning for the re- 
mainder of my days. And finally came a thought to haunt me and 
distress me like a nightmare, that howsoever foolish the beginning, 
and indescribably horrible and awful the middle of the Johns- 
town Flood, its ending in the last remaining joints of the tail of 
humanity was comical and grotesque in the extreme: a farce suc- 
ceeding one of the most stupendous tragedies effected by human 
agency the world has ever seen ! For several months, however, as I 
deemed it a sacred duty to my clients, I went among the living and 
the dead ; and having examined the bodies of all the motherless in- 
fants of whom there was any knowledge, (including several of those 
which may be said in truth to have survived only through the 
agency of yourself and your assistants in supplying them daily for 
weeks with the necessary food, ) and all the corpses of infants which 
have been recovered up to this time, I have found none with the pre- 
scribed malformation : and as consistently as I can, with the fee of 
my departed clients in my pocket, I am glad of it ; for I, perhaps 
more than any other, know and appreciate from my investigations 
the incalculable good you have accomplished without ostentation in 
ministering to the infantile sufferers of the Johnstown Flood, and 
hold you in the highest esteem. 

“ In fine, Miss Jansen, I believe the child is dead, with its pa- 
rents ; and you and your aunt, Miss Graham, are now absolutely 


260 


JANE JANSEN. 


secure in the possession of your valuable tract of land ; and with 
the heartiest congratulations, I remain, 

Yours Truly, Andrew J. Clifford. 

“ P. S. — Please accept with my compliments the accompanying 
Abstract of Title and Brief, in which you will find all the nec- 
essary data to an understanding of the Dobson claim and the hair- 
breadth escape you and your aunt have made ; and in the light 
of what I have reported above, I trust you will pardon while 
you smile over the facetious endorsement on the papers, Nulla 
vestigia retrorsum , 

Yours, etc., A. J. C.” 

Concurrently with the reading of the letter, I realized with a 
shudder that there was one infant survivor of the Flood whom the 
writer had not examined, and who might be, with greater probability 
in consequence of the extended search, the lost heir. This was the 
child on the floor before me, whom the unknown woman in the 
next chamber had carried miles away into the country and concealed 
in every way possible to her, in her engrossing desire to possess him 
as her own. As I closed the letter, I halted between an impulse to 
take up the child and examine the conformation of his backbone, 
and a restraint of fear of the overwhelming consequences of an iden- 
tification of the heir in the infant in my charge ; and while I sat in 
this distressing perplexity, Dr. Mansfield laid his hand gently on my 
shoulder, as he remarked in a low tone, “ Our unknown patient is 
dead ; and unless you intend to adopt the child, I would advise you 
to notify the coroner of the county at once and let him take charge 
of both — the dead and the living — at the expense of the county.” 

“ No, Doctor ; I will bury the woman at my own expense, and 
keep the baby ” — 

I was about to add “ Out of the abundance of his own estate,” 
when I reflected that as yet I had not determined the identity of the 
child and the rightful owner of the Heart of Appalachia. Instead, 
I said, “ Please call, on your way home, at the shop of your old 
friend, the undertaker, Mr. Beverly, and tell him to come here at 
once ; and leave me your bill for attendance on my unknown guest, 
at your earliest convenience. Short reckonings, you know, make 
long friends ; and while to-day I may be able to pay my obligations, 
to-morrow ” — 

“ I will take your paper for a million, Jane, without endorsement. 
But never for attendance on the poor. I have no charge on my 
books against you. Good afternoon.” 

And as the good old physician went out of the room and down 
the stairs, I inspected the babe, and found the malformation as de- 


JANE JANSEN. 


261 


scribed in the letter of the attorney — an unmistakable deflection to 
the right of the terminal vertebrae of the infant’s backbone I 


LI. 

During the long night that followed this discovery, I suffered the 
extremities of mental anguish. I saw my dear aunt and myself ab- 
solutely penniless — all our personal property sufficing to pay the 
mesne profits of the Heart of Appalachia for a few years only of the 
long time we had possessed it in ignorance of the rightful claim of 
another; I saw the families of Arabella and Yalu wandering about 
in utter destitution and helplessness ; and I saw Philemon stare in 
his blindness at the stone walls of misfortune which surrounded him 
and wring his hands in an agony of despair. 

At length, in the chaos of our sudden reduction from a comfort- 
able competency to absolute destitution — or, seemingly in compari- 
son, from a condition of infinite affluence to homeless beggary — I 
saw our dependents separated but earning a living on the several 
farms of Robley, ’Squire Burkholder, and others of my friends ; 
while my aunt and myself, in a cottage near the market for our 
wares, sat from dawn to dusk with needle and brush in hand, smil- 
ing in each other’s face to beguile our weariness of heart over our 
most miserable struggle for existence — while Philemon pressed betimes 
his nose against the window-pane of a charitable asylum and looked 
in vain through his sightless orbs over the tiled roofs and chimney- 
pots of London, and over the illimitable waste of the Atlantic, to 
catch a glimpse of the woman he loved among the strangers in the 
Heart of Appalachia. 

Again, I saw the eyes of all mankind turn to the unconscious 
babe in my keeping, and see not that he is other than he came to 
me, a waif from the Johnstown Flood ; and while they see him grow 
in health and comfort to manhood and take his name and station in 
life as one of the happy family of the Heart of Appalachia, the 
tongues of all mankind tell only of my exceeding kindness and 
goodness to him ; while I, conscious alone of having defrauded by 
concealment the innocent babe and the unsuspecting boy and man, 
suffer in silence the most excrutiating tortures of retributory justice 
for secret crimes. 

Turning in bed, to put an end to the distressing vision, I saw an- 
other equally trying — I saw the eyes of all mankind turn toward the 
child and see through innumerable folds of garments the malforma- 


262 


JANE JANSEN. 


tion that established his identity as the sole owner of the Heart of 
Appalachia and all its belongings, and shudder at my heartless 
hypocrisy and criminal deception ; while I, in fancied security, com- 
mingled with honest men and women as friends, and talked of deeds 
of charity and love, and uttered the holy word of Honor with the 
placidity of an automaton of brass. 

And oh ! the myriad of accidents that might befall the child in 
despite of every precaution I might take to protect him while I 
kept his identity a secret locked in my own bosom ! 1 trembled as 

one after another they came in a seemingly endless succession in my 
troubled vision. 

Whether or not I slept a minute during the frightful night, I do 
not know ; but with the first crowing of the cock, I experienced a 
vague feeling of awaking from a nightmare ; and while I was wide 
awake, in the reaction of the relief I felt, I determined to investigate 
every item of the Dobson claim and consult the best attorneys of 
Western Pennsylvania with respect to its validity before revealing to 
anybody the identity of the child. There might be an error of fact 
or judgment in the abstract and brief which had been sent me; and 
with the same justice that I might admit the claim when found free 
from error, I might reject it and cast it aside as a thing of naught, 
affecting neither the child nor myself, if found defective. 

In despite of this determination, however, to await without further 
alarm and anxiety the result of my investigations as soon after the 
burial of the unknown woman as possible, I rose at the first peep of 
dawn ; and, after dressing hastily, I hurried out of the house and over 
the way to the cabin of the Korean family to see with my own eyes 
and be satisfied that the child of such overwhelming import to all of 
us in and about the dear old homestead was, as I had given him to 
Cora the evening before, in the best of health : and found him so. 


LII. 

The brief of Mr. Clifford detailed the circumstances, by which the 
title to the Heart of Appalachia became involved, as follows: — 

In 1830, a German from Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, by 
name, Hans Zimmermann, or John Carpenter, in English, purchased 
the tract of land from the legal owner at the time, and had the deed 
executed to him under the name of John Carpenter, in accordance 
with a not uncommon practice at the time. 

In 1831, the new purchaser went on the land ; and some time dur- 


JANE JANSEN. 


263 


ing the year, removed with his wife, Wilhelmina, and an only 
daughter, Roxanna, to Schellsburg, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, 
leaving an only son, John Carpenter, (with a wife and three child- 
ren, ) on the tract as his tenant, as appears a matter of record in 
various ways in Bedford County. 

In 1839, the wife Wilhelmina died ; and the following year, the 
father, leaving a will to which his signature was affixed in German, 
Hans Zimmermann, and under which it was probated, recorded, and 
indexed. 

By the will, the father devised the land to his daughter, then in 
her eighteenth year, intermarried with Levi Steiner, and residing in 
Adams County, Illinois, By the same instrument, the several notes 
given by the son from year to year in payment of the rent of the 
tract, were canceled ; and the son was appointed the sole executor. 

The son and executor in due time settled the estate of his father, 
and, as his filed accounts show, remitted to his sister, Roxanna 
Steiner, her share of the moneys arising from the sale of the per- 
sonal property, after payment of the funeral expenses and debts. 

Soon after — in fact, on his way home from Bedford, after filing his 
final account — the son and executor, John Carpenter (the tenant 
now by subserviency, of his sister Roxanna, or by continuation of 
the relation of tenant and landlord, that had subsisted between him 
and their father, ) turned aside to lodge over night with a friend, and 
was burned, with all the papers which he carried with him, in the 
destruction of the dwelling of his friend by an accidental fire. 

Among his papers at home, however, was found a will, dated in 
1839, in which, in general terms without description or definition, 
he gave, bequeathed, and devised all his personal and real estate to 
his wife, Isabella, and appointed her his executrix. 

This will was probated and registered ; and, as far as the records 
show, the executrix never filed an account — holding nothing 
in trust. 

Isabella, then, and her three children, Basil, Bernard, and Ber- 
tram, continued to reside on the mountain tract; until, at length, she 
dying intestate, the three sons, presumably being the owners of the 
land as the heirs at law of their mother, and nothing appearing a 
matter of record in Westmoreland County to the contrary, conveyed 
the same to Alexander Graham, my grandfather, in 1850. 

In the meantime, Roxanna Steiner, in whom the legal title vested 
on the death of her father, Hans Zimmermann, or the real John 
Carpenter of the records of Westmoreland County, at the age of 
nineteen gave birth to a daughter, Anne, and, becoming insane at the 
time, spent the remainder of her days in a lunatic asylum in Illi- 


264 


JANE JANSEN. 


nois — dying in 1885, in her sixty-fourth year, and one year after the 
decease of her husband : an incapable person legally, by reason, cu- 
riously, of infancy, insanity, and coverture during nearly the whole 
period of the occupancy of the mountain tract hy her brother’s fam- 
ily and their representatives in Alexander Graham and his de- 
scendants. 

In 1860, Anne Steiner, intermarried with Abner Jennings, gave 
birth to a daughter, Matilda, and died of puerperal fever eight days 
afterward. 

And this Matilda Jennings, in time becoming the wife of Phineas 
Dobson, the title to the land vested in her in 1885, on the death of 
her grandmother, Roxanna Steiner. 

And this Matilda Dobson, dying intestate, with her husband, 
Phineas, in the Johnstown Flood, the title vested in her peculiarly 
marked child, in case it survived her. 

Or, in the event of its having perished with its parents in the 
great catastrophe, the title, reverting to the estate of the original 
John Carpenter, or Hans Zimmermann, by the extinction of the line 
of his devisee, Roxanna, became vested in the collateral line of her 
brother, John. 

And all the children of John in time, for a valuable consideration 
having conveyed, with a warranty, all their estate, right, title, inter- 
est, property, claim, and demand whatsoever, in law, equity or other- 
wise, howsoever, of, in, and to the Heart of Appalachia and every 
part thereof, to Alexander Graham, the title became vested in him 
and his legal representatives, (my Aunt Melissa and myself, stand- 
ing in the stead of my mother.) 


LIII. 

I first drove to Bedford, the capital of Bedford County, and then 
to Greenesburgh, the county-seat of Westmoreland; and, with the 
assistance of competent attorneys, ( without the knowledge of Mr. 
Clifford, ) I found that the facts in the case were as Mr. Clifford had 
stated them in his papers, and the accompanying affidavits formal 
and correct with respect to the legitimacy and legal status of Mrs. Dob- 
son and Mrs. Jennings, and the age, insanity, and coverture of Mrs. 
Roxanna Steiner ; while the conclusions of the learned lawyer were 
treated by his brother attorneys as a mere matter of opinion and far 
from conclusive — my Bedford counselor siding in a measure with 
Mr. Clifford, that the legal title was in the Dobson child, and that 


JANE JANSEN. 


265 


the statute of limitations would not run against infancy, insanity, 
and coverture, albeit, by tacking on one disability to another, the 
period be extended to a thousand years, the act of 1856 to the con- 
trary notwithstanding, while he doubted the sufficiency of the 
identification of the child ; and my Greenesburgh counselor antag- 
onizing Mr. Clifford to the extent of declaring that my aunt and I 
not only had a colorable and presumptive title to the land, but such 
an acquired title by our adverse holding — peaceably, openly, and no- 
toriously — for fifty years, “ that nothing under the shining canopy 
could defeat it,” as he expressed it. 

I was not satisfied. In fact, I was more perplexed by my coun- 
selors than by the facts which I encountered in my investigations. 
Their mode of reasoning and their code of ethics were so different 
from mine, that the longer I considered their various and conflicting 
statements, the more discordant and uncertain everything and every- 
body involved in the matter became— including myself. 

Finally, in my bewilderment, I went to Somerset, the capital of 
the county of the same name, to consult an old attorney there, 
whom frequently I had heard my guests refer to as “ not only a good 
lawyer but a good man,” which seemed to indicate to me that there 
was a foundation in fact for the belief which I was beginning to en- 
tertain that a good lawyer might be a bad man, and, conversely, a 
good man, a bad lawyer; and that I should use my judgment in ac- 
cepting or rejecting the advice of an attorney in everything that in- 
volved my integrity and honor as well as I should another equally 
learned in another department of human affairs. 

Leaving my carriage and horses at the Vannear House, I set out 
to find the office of the good lawyer and good man combined, and 
soon came to a building which answered the description I had re- 
ceived from the proprietor of the hotel. I stopped in front of it, 
however, in doubt ; for not only was the small tin sign by the side 
of the open door an absolute blank from the defacement of time, but 
a noisy group of boys were playing at marbles on the pavement in 
front of the passage, and a fine old Irish setter was sleeping in the 
sun on the sill, while a glance through the open door revealed an in- 
terior more like that of a clean and tidy country-woman’s parlor 
than a country-lawyer’s office. 

“ Can any of you boys direct me to the office of Mr. Beaver ? ” I 
enquired of the boys at play. 

“ Mr. Beaver ? ” queried the brightest of the lads, rising and look- 
ing around at his playmates. “ I never heard of him before. He 
must be a new-comer. What is his first name ? ” 

HH 


266 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ John, I believe.” 

“ What does he do for a living ? ” 

“ He is a lawyer, and known by everybody in the county, and cer- 
tain^ you must be acquainted with him, my little man.” 

“Oh, now I understand — you mean Uncle John, do you not? 
This is his office. Never mind the dog — step over him — he wouldn’t 
bite anybody.” 

“ But I can see there is nobody in the office ? ” 

“ Well, you can bet Uncle John isn’t far away, or old Tanbark 
wouldn’t be snoozing here in the sun. You will find him at work in 
his shop in the rear of his office. Open the door between and walk 
right in.” 

Whereupon, thanking the boy, and raising my skirts so that I 
might step over Tanbark without ruffling his hairs or temper, or 
disturbing his dreams, I stepped over the sleeping dog, crossed the 
cleanly scrubbed oak floor of the parlor-like office, and knocked at 
the door of the shop. 

“ Come in ! Come in ! ” I heard an old man’s voice respond, but 
seemingly at a greater distance than the interior of the chamber. 

I entered and found myself in an apartment the like of which I 
had never seen before, and to which I can apply no more appropri- 
ate name than a Patch of Paradise. A work-bench, with a great dis- 
play of fine cutting, sawing, filing, and polishing tools upon it and 
around it, constituted the most conspicuous object in the room ; and 
a number of unfinished fishing-rods and divers fishing appliances on 
it indicated that the bench and tools were adapted especially for 
their manufacture. Above the bench, on the wall, was a display of 
sporting guns, powder-horns, shot-pouches, game-bags, rods, reels, 
and creels, and the like, tastefully commingled with trophies of a 
hunter’s and fisherman’s skill, in divers skulls of such beasts and 
fishes of prey, as the lynx and pike ; while on an end of the bench, 
lay an otter skin, and on it, asleep in the sunshine streaming through 
the window, a large, sleek tortoise-shell cat. 

On the wall opposite the bench, a mocking-bird hopped from 
perch to perch in a cage, and, in rollicking delight, mimicked all the 
singing-birds of spring in the elevated region of Somerset. 

Before a window facing the south, a flower-rack stood with a fine 
collection of plants in bloom, tulip, hyacinth, geranium, and rose. 
Before another window, a small aquarium, with a pair of the triple- 
tailed gold-fish of the Orient dreamily swaying and folding their 
tripartite trains without moving their bodies, in a happy suspense, 
contented in the contracted ocean of a gallon or two of water. 

In one corner, a grand old clock — motionless. In another, a big 


JANE JANSEN. 


267 


Brahma hen sitting in a basket. 

In the capacious open fire-place, a smouldering fire of wild-cherry 
wood filling the room with a most delightful perfume. The rug in 
front of the fire, a black-bear’s hide ; and the several chairs in a 
semicircle around the rug, a rustic rocker and two arm-chairs made 
of rhododendron roots and unbarked hickory saplings. 

u Sit down and make yourself at home,” I heard the same voice 
say that responded to my knock, as I entered the charming shop; 
and looking around to see the old man from which it came, I saw 
that he was not in the room but in the garden near the back door 
ajar, testing a newly-made fishing-rod by swishing it in various 
ways, and noting carefully its curves, flexibility, and propor- 
tionate weights. 

And while the exceedingly careful, precise, and exacting old man 
tested his rod, I sat in one of the rustic arm-chairs, and, in despite 
of my anxiety to return home before nightfall, with my awakened 
sympathies by the delightful surprises, I soon was in harmony 
with the motionless clock, the contented fish in their bucket of wa- 
ter, the singing bird in his gilded cage, the sleeping cat on the otter- 
skin, and the hatching hen in her basket in the corner, and en- 
joyed the most blissful half-hour of repose I had known for a 
twelve-month. 

At length, after the old man had marked in mysterious characters 
the results of his tests from one end of the new rod to another, he 
separated the several joints and brought them into the room and 
laid them on the bench, remarking, as he did so, “ Ah, pussy, com- 
ing in out of the sun, I came within an ace of disturbing you before 
I saw you ; but an inch of a miss is as good as a mile. And — well, 
well, can it be that, in my interest in my work, I have been so in- 
considerate to others as to ignore them, and especially a lady and a 
stranger who presumably has called on me on business and perhaps 
may be in a hurry ? I humbly beg your pardon.” 

And thereupon I became acquainted with Uncle John Beaver, a 
grand old man of the finest mould — an embodiment of the serenity 
of a healthy, happy, wise, and honorable old age, as perfect, per- 
haps, as the birch-scented Highlands of Southwestern Pennsylvania 
ever have known. 

I felt at ease at once in his presence ; and in a short time after we 
had exchanged a few remarks about the nature of the case and the 
situation of the land affected, I felt impelled to reveal to him the 
peculiar and distressing dilemma I was in myself between my duty 
and obligations to my dear aunt, almost as helpless as an infant, on 
the one hand, and my duty and obligations to the babe, which the 


268 


JANE JANSEN. 


overwhelming catastrophe of the Johnstown Flood had consigned 
to my special care, on the other. 

“ I see — I see,” quietly said the old lawyer, adjusting carefully the 
two pairs of spectacles which he wore over his long straight nose, 
and combed with his descending fingers his long white beard, 
“ there is involved in this, not only the title to a valuable tract of 
land, but the honor and peace of mind of a conscientious young 
woman, eager to distinguish the right from the wrong in a divided 
duty, and brave enough to dissever the right from the wrong at any 
cost : a most interesting case. Now, my child, read to me carefully 
all the papers you have and tell me your story freely and fully, 
while I work away at your side with my rods — or go a-fishing in 
fancy, which is the next thing to fishing in fact : and fishing in fact, 
you know, is only another name for sitting on the bank of the river 
of time, in silent contemplation of the transitory relations of all the 
ephemeral persons and things in existence as they float by. 

The old man went about his work, scraping here with a piece of 
glass where he had made a peculiar mark on one of the sections of 
his new rod, and filed there where he had made another mark, and 
adjusted a number of gauges with great nicety, while I read all the 
papers in the case, reported the results of the examinations made by 
the Bedford and Greenesburgh attorneys, and revealed the distress- 
ing doubt in which their divergent and otherwise unsatisfactory 
opinions left me. 

Having concluded my story, the old man continued to manipulate 
a section of his new rod until he had brought it to his exacting stan- 
dard of perfection. Then, scrutinizing it from end to end with a 
smile of satisfaction, and remarking, “ There, that will do,” he laid 
it down on the bench, and took up another — as he did so, turning to 
me and saying, “ And now, my child, you want to know what to do, 
and have a reason for doing so that will meet all the demands of 
your exceptionally comprehensive and uncompromising conscience. 

“ In the first place, my child, you know that all things are in a 
state of transition — themselves and their relations to one another 
shifting constantly from one complication of infinite scope to an- 
other. This is the natural condition of all of us and every atom of 
us, and every part and parcel of the hypothetic whole around us, the 
universe. Now, in the affairs of mankind, to minimize the effects of 
these mutations, laws have been laid down and governments estab- 
lished, which may be likened to a system of balances, or checks, by 
which, in a measure the natural disturbances are reduced and ad- 
justed — cosmos succeeding chaos, certainty, uncertainty, and peace, 
war. This is the artificial condition in which you and I live in the 


JANE JANSEN. 


269 


Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for example: not as a young wo- 
man and an old man as we are in a state of nature, but as citizens in 
an artificial world, secondary in its complication only to the natural 
world to which it is a kind of compensatory attachment. 

“ Now, since the natural world is undergoing an infinity of 
changes constantly, so the artificial world of law and government, 
to meet the demands of these mutations among mankind, is under- 
going similarly an infinity of changes ; and that which is the best of 
laws or governments at one time and in one place, may be the worst 
at another. Or, to meet the demands of your enquiring conscience, 
that which is right for you and me to do in a state of nature, may 
be wrong in us as law-abiding citizens in the artificial Common- 
wealth of Pennsylvania. And when you found your code of mor- 
ality as a young woman differed from that of the lawyers whom you 
consulted, you were unconsciously a representative of our natural, 
unrestrained, or savage state, while they were as unconsciously per- 
haps the representatives of our artificial, trammeled, or civil- 
ized state. 

“ In connection with this, I may say here, that many men and 
women not comprehending the true relation between the natural and 
artificial, go through life in the distressing condition of doubt you 
are to-day : their natural impulses constantly beating their wings 
against the wires of restraint. By way of illustration, and touching 
a point in your case, there are many half-blind people to-day, who, 
because they see no title to land in a state of nature, argue and 
wrangle that our artificial system of land-tenure is wrong in itself — 
that one man’s right to stand upon, to live upon, and to use and en- 
joy a part of the earth’s habitable surface to the exclusion of all 
others, is as good as another’s ; overlooking, in the obscurity of their 
vision, the beneficial effects to themselves, or society at large, which 
have followed the inauguration of the system, permitting the holders 
of land to work and not war, to come and go safely and not stand in 
dread, to live in security and die in peace — not otherwise. I venture 
to say that any reversion of the artificial system of land-tenure to- 
day in the State of Pennsylvania to or toward a state of nature, or 
equal rights, would result in infinitely more harm than good. 

“ Now, that you may see yourself in your double capacity dis- 
tinctly, and never lose sight of the distinction between that which is 
natural in human affairs, with its own particular code of morals, 
and that which is artificial, with its artificial code of ethics, let me 
take up your case as it might come up for trial in a court of justice. 

“ On the one side, there would be the babe; and on the other, 
your aunt and yourself. And assuming that you would have 


270 


JANE JANSEN. 


equally able attorneys, the babe would win over and over again in 
the lower court, where all the natural impulses of humanity would 
be in favor of the infant having unquestionably the legal title, as it 
is termed technically — your sympathies and those of your aunt, as 
women, spontaneously and irresistibly would he with the child, 
with its awful involvings of half a century of insanity and the in- 
describable horrors of the Johnstown Flood ; and the sympathies of 
the jury, composed of men, many of them fathers, and none 
capable of separating his artificial citizenship from his natural self, 
would be the same as yours; while your aunt and yourself would be 
successful in the higher court, where only the artificial relations in- 
volved would be considered by the judges learned in the law, or hav- 
ing their natural instincts and impulses subordinated to their arti- 
ficial acquirements and obligations. With them, the statute of lim- 
itations would be conclusive, being on the side of public peace, gov- 
ernmental stability, and the least of evils to all concerned, or soci- 
ety at large as well as the litigants ; and the constructive title which 
your aunt and yourself have acquired, by the peaceable, open, and 
notorious occupancy and possession of the land by yourselves and 
your predecessors, by purchase and descent, for fifty years, be 
deemed paramount to the technical legal title, or the mere right 
of property, which is legally the equivalent of no right at all, 
in the child. 

“ In conclusion, it was right in you, in a state of nature, in the 
vortex of the Johnstown Flood, to risk your life to save the un- 
known infant; and it is right in you to do all in your power as a 
woman to nourish and educate the child which you have taken in 
charge ; but as a law-abiding citizen in the artificial Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania, with its elaborate and intricate system of adjust- 
ments, checks, and compensations, you would be doing wrong in 
acknowledging the validity of the Dobson claim, or the worthless 
legal title of your little ward, and robbing your aunt and yourself 
of the valuable tract of land which you have inherited from your 
ancestors and hold to-day by an acquired title, simply by the opera- 
tion of the law, which is as good and fair and just as any other arti- 
ficial tenure in the eyes of the law. 

“ Now, let me present you with a fisherman’s or fisherwoman’s 
complete outfit, which I finished a few days ago ; and when you re- 
turn to your mountain home, go a-fishing at every opportunity and 
meditate on what I have told you ; and when your ward shall have 
become big enough to hold the rod, take him with you, to start him 
in the only way of acquiring a right knowledge and understanding 
of the true relations of mundane things in general and human af- 


JANE JANSEN. 


271 


fairs in particular, by silent contemplation on the bank of the river 
of time, and not while struggling in the stream. But whatever you 
do, hold on to your land. 

“ You shake your head. You will take neither my advice nor my 
rod. You are unwilling to have your natural impulses restrained 
and your inborn inclinations changed. Well, well, my child ; the 
time will come when you will be fettered and trammeled like the 
rest of us — yea, like your Uncle John here and his companions in 
the artificial world of this little room ; and I sincerely hope that 
when that time shall have come, you will be contented with your 
lot as we are here. See these plants in the perfection of bloom, 
though each is confined to a little earth less than six inches in diam- 
eter. See these fish in their little glass-walled tank, infinitely more 
tranquil and secure than the} 7, would be in the illimitable ocean. 
Listen to the mocking-bird, singing as cheerily in his gilded prison 
as in the groves of Louisiana. See my old cat, General Grant — his 
predatory instinct checked by his artificial life to such an extent 
that he sleeps within a leap of his natural prey. And see your old 
Uncle John, the most enthusiastic sportsman in the country, re- 
strained by rheumatism and enfeebled by age, yet happily engaged 
from day to day and year to year — taking no note of time, as you 
may infer from his clock — fishing and hunting in fancy with the 
keenest relish of youth in fact. And will you not be contented now, 
my child, to be converted from a natural to an artificial personage, 
as all law-abiding citizens must be soon or late ? ” 

“ No, never ! Uncle John,” I replied, rising to my feet. “ You 
have taught me to see my way clear, and I will do what I believe to 
be right. I was born a woman, and I will die a woman, and I am 
glad of it ; though I never appreciated the fact fully that I was a 
woman, and never can be a citizen or artificial personage inconsistent 
therewith, until this moment. 

“ If the impulses in me were good, to save the life of the child in 
the midst of the Johnstown Flood, at any risk to myself ; the same 
impulses now, I believe to be good, that impel me to save the estate 
of the child, at any cost to myself. 

“ The three sons of the younger John Carpenter had no title to the 
land, and they passed none to my grandfather ; and if their Aunt 
Roxanna, before she became insane, could have recovered the land 
from her nephews, her descendant should not be prevented from do- 
ing so by reason of the insanity of the old lady, or the negligence of 
her husband to have a committee appointed to take charge of the es- 
tate of his afflicted wife, and bring suit in her behalf before the per- 
iod of twenty-one years had elapsed from the death of the elder 


272 


JANE JANSEN. 


John Carpenter. A wrong cannot be made a right by the operation 
of time ; and there is no statute of limitations in the code of honor 
as I understand it.” 

“Well, well, my willful child, since you will gall yourself with 
the fetters which your citizenship has put about your limbs, what do 
you think you should do, if not take my advice and rod and 
go a-fishing?” 

“ Renounce my claim at once to the land in favor of the rightful 
heir ; in which renunciation, I doubt not, my dear aunt will join 
without a word : for she is a woman as well as myself, and knows 
only natural right and wrong, and never heard a word about artificial 
or legal right and wrong in her life.” 

“ You cannot, my child.” 

“Why not? I have been the arbiter of my actions from child- 
hood, my will supreme; and my judgment, after the most careful 
and comprehensive consideration I can give the matter, is final.” 

“ Simply, because, my child, you are bound hand and foot 
whether you admit it or not. You are in the artificial world of the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and you are an infant in the eyes 
of the law and will be until you are twenty-one years of age, and 
absolutely incapable of doing anything to affect your title to the 
Heart of Appalachia : and I am heartily glad of it ; for before 
shall have reached the age of twenty-one, you will learn to see your- 
self as others see you, besides your Uncle John ; or you will be mar- 
ried to a good man who will refuse to join with you in your quit- 
claim deed or disclaimer, and defeat your intentions.” 

I sank back into the arm-chair, in which I had been sitting, in a 
state of mental collapse ; for, curiously, in all my investigations and 
consultations with my attorneys, I had recognized the legal disabil- 
ity of infancy in others, but had ignored it absolutely in myself — so 
accustomed as I had been for so many years to a life of indepen- 
dence, that I seemed to be deprived of my very existence by being- 
compelled to admit my legal or artificial infancy as an adamantine 
fact ; and when I recovered my senses, I found I had taken in my 
hands the proffered rod of the good and wise old man and was 
ready to go a-fishing, or do anything that he might direct. 

That, in substance, was to report the discovery of the child at once 
to Mr. Clifford, and beg him to withold any proceeding in behalf of 
him until I should have attained my majority and be capable 
of being appointed guardian of the person and estate of the child, 
whatsoever it might be in the artificial world of the Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania. 

“ Conceal nothing, my child ; and all will go well. And ever bear 


JANE JANSEN. 


273 


in mind, that whatsoever you do as a citizen, millions of human be- 
ings besides yourself are involved and interested, and must be con- 
sidered by all who would do their whole duty.” 


LIV. 

Late in the afternoon, I parted with Uncle John with a promise 
that he and his aged wife, Aunt Betsy, would attend my wedding, 
“ if the length and utmost stretch of their slowly contracting tether 
would permit,” as he expressed it; and after supper, I set out with 
a five-hour drive between me and the Heart of Appalachia by the 
glimmering light of an accrescent moon. 

Giving my trusty pair of high-bred mares a rather unusual free- 
dom from the thraldom of the bit, while I held the lines loosely in 
my left hand, I grasped the little bundle containing the several sec- 
tions of my new fishing-rod with my right, and went a-fishing in 
fancy, if not in fact, like the happy old man who had wrought it 
with infinite care and consummate skill and given it to me as a sou- 
venir of himself and a symbol of his teachings. 

And sitting on the bank of the river of time in silent meditation, 
I saw in my imagination the begodded Buddha, Sakya Muni, sitting 
for years in contemplation, in the midst of the intensely striving and 
struggling millions of India, until, the real relations of everything 
and everybody around him having impressed themselves in his be- 
ing and become formulated, he rose and began, as he expressed it, 
“ to turn the wheel of the Law,” which has been the religion, or the 
life-and-death code of morality of a third of mankind ever since. 

And gradually I saw the image of this ancient Meditator under the 
shadow of the Himalayas pass into the likeness of the modern 
Uncle John under the shadow of Appalachia, fishing in fancy or in 
fact, while he formulated his comprehensive doctrine of the dual na- 
ture of the world in which all civilized people live — a natural envi- 
ronment of Appalachia, for example, with unrestrained Jane Jansens 
wandering about in it and thinking and acting as they saw fit as 
willful savages, and an artificial Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
peopled by artificial persons called citizens, who, one and all, are re- 
stricted by an infinity of checks and guided in all their actions by 
a special code of morals which adapts itself to the mutations of the 
natural world, and shifts and changes from time to time, but at any 
particular time is the ultimatum of Justice and Right. 

II 


274 


JANE JANSEN. 


This vision passed, I saw my good friend Lycurgus Smith, as he 
appeared in his double capacity to me, as a man of business and a 
man of woman born, while my head was upheld in the death-grip of 
poor Congo ; and I smiled a second time at the strange partition the 
circumstances of his life had made of his individuality. 

And with my smile, this vision passed, and in its stead came a 
well-defined thought that Smith was a man and Uncle John was a 
man ; and that it was natural for a man to be a Janus, a natural and 
an artificial personage, a man of woman born and a man of busi- 
ness, or a sportsman, delighting only in hunting and fishing in the 
unbounded mountain wilds of Appalachia, and yet not only sub- 
mitting cheerily to all the restraints of law, rheumatism, and old 
age, but teaching artificial restraint to the savages who consulted him 
as the essential spirit of the Rule of Enlightened Life. 

“ But I was born a woman and I would die a woman, and I was 
glad of it,” I repeated the remark I had made to Uncle John; and I 
felt that I could never be dissected and dissevered into two opposing 
beings or characters while I lived. 

Then, happity, I thought of Antigone ; and I said to myself, I 
understand now fully and satisfactorily the engrossing .sympathy I 
have felt from childhood in the life and death of that grandest of the 
Grecian heroines of antiquity to me. She was a woman. A man 
never would have committed the artificial crime which condemned 
her to a horrible death ; for a man would have recognized his arti- 
ficial duty as a law-abiding citizen of Thebes, as paramount to his 
natural duty as a brother, and obeyed the injunction of Kreon. But 
I would have done as she ; and so would Grace ; and even that 
gentlest of women, my dear Aunt Melissa ; and doubtless the life of 
Antigone in literature for twenty centuries has resulted from the fact 
that in her Sophokles has delineated a true woman whom all nat- 
ural men and women consciously or unconsciously recognize. 

What further thoughts of a kindred nature I might have had, be- 
fore reaching home, had not a little accident befallen me, I cannot 
sa} r ; but in approaching the bridge over the mountain stream at 
Judge Picking’s, at the foot of the ascent from the valley to the sum- 
mit of the Rhododendron Ridge of Appalachia, my loosely-held pair 
of high-bred mares veered a little from the middle of the turnpike 
to slake their thirst, and tilted me, with Uncle John’s fishing-rod in 
my tightened grip instead of the lines, over the side of the bridge 
into a pool of cold water, fully two feet deep ! and away they ran as 
fast as they could go with the empty carriage behind them ! leaving 
me, in my wet and heavy clothing, at midnight to walk several miles 
to my mountain-top home, and realize at my leisure the necessity 


JANE JANSEN. 


275 


of checks and guidance to high-bred mares if not to high-bred 
maidens, and that a woman can be no more a fisherman in fancy or 
in fact, than she can be otherwise than she came into the world and 
will go out of it, a woman. 


LV. 

For several days after my return from Somerset, I looked upon the 
fishing-rod which Uncle John had given me as a rod of chastise- 
ment : the cost of repairing my new carriage being considerable, and 
the injury done to Bessie and Fannie in running away incalculable 
and perhaps irremediable. I wandered about the house and farm 
thoroughly subdued— broken to the bit — manacled — caged — a whip- 
ped child of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Gradually, however, my long uncontrolled and boundlessly free 
and independent nature, while breathing the exalting and expand- 
ing atmosphere of the Heart of Appalachia, asserted itself; and, at 
length, I found myself in. my musing not only opposing Uncle John 
but defying all the lawyers and judges of the land— saying to my- 
self betimes : — 

I will err on the side of human nature rather than human 
artificiality. 

The laws of Pennsylvania have been made by men, not women, 
and the judges who interpret them are not of woman born but 
hatched by artificial incubators ; else the great artificial world of the 
Commonwealth would not depend for its peace and stability on put- 
ting a limit to the disabilities of infancy, insanity, and coverture, in 
order that the strong may be strengthened at the expense of the 
weak and helpless, the hale and hearty aggrandized by the estates of 
the unfortunate and afflicted, and artificial citizens, with their arti- 
ficial codes of morality, and artificial corporations, so far evolved 
from human nature as to have no code of morality at all, wax over- 
whelmingly great on the unprotected property of wives and mothers. 

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark for a verity, 
when wrong becomes right by the mere operation of time : when 
fraud, collusion, conspiracy, and the basest of crimes may defeat in 
a civil action, for the welfare of society at large, the innocent, the 
pure, and the good ; while in a criminal action, the voice of the law 
in the name of justice to all, proclaims in thunder tones, “ It is bet- 
ter that ninety and nine guilty men escape, than that one innocent 
man should suffer ! ” 


276 


JANE JANSEN. 


And with all due deference to good old Uncle John, the clearest 
and most comprehensive expositor of the aim and scope of the art 
of making laws for the government of mankind, I have ever met in 
person or in print, I believe that, as in the arts of painting and 
sculpture, and story-telling, and other elaborate inventions of intel- 
lectual activity, a return to human nature in the raw betimes will be 
productive of incalculable good rather than harm. By the changes 
incident to growth in all things, the art of law-making and govern- 
ing may become monstrous, in part or as a whole, in its departure 
from the normal end of its existence; and I believe that in this dis- 
regard for the innocent and helpless in a civil suit, by putting an 
artificial limit to natural disabilities, which a jury might determine 
the sufficiency of as well as any other matter of fact, is an excres- 
cence of greater evil than good, and should be cut off. Better far 
that ninety and nine hale and hearty adults bear the expenses and 
endure the tribulations of litigation, than that one innocent infant 
should suffer by reason of any reasonable disability to twelve good 
and true men. 

In fine, I believe there is too much judge and too little jury — too 
much of the artificial and too little of the natural — or too much 
man and too little woman — in the administration of justice in the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to-day ; and despite of all the law T - 
yers and judges in the State, and the statute of limitations, and any 
and all other enactments that will give me an unfair advantage over 
the little babe whose life I have been instrumental in preserving, 
I will save his estate, at any cost to myself. 

With this determination, before communicating with Mr. Clifford, 
or revealing the identity of the child in my charge to anybody, I 
impatiently awaited the return of Robley and Grace to test my hu- 
manity and my code of morals by theirs — they being as good a man 
and woman in their instincts and impulses, I believed, as it would 
be possible for me to find among my friends and acquaintances. 


LVI. 

On seeing me, after their three weeks’ absence, both Grace and 
Robley turned pale ; the former clasping me in her arms and kissing 
me affectionately between her tearful questionings, “ What is the 
matter? WRat awful thing has happened? You look as though you 
had gone through another Johnstown Flood ? You said nothing in 
your letters about any calamity having befallen you — dear, dear 


JANE JANSEN. 


277 


Jane, what is the matter ? My heart is breaking to know, that I 
may kiss and kiss the hurt till I make it well.” 

At the first opportunity, I gave them the packet I had received 
from Mr. Clifford, Grace impatiently took the letter and read it 
aloud; and while she was indulging in one exclamation after an- 
other over the ludicrous feature of the overwhelming catastrophe, 
“ D ear me ! how perfectly absurd! The idea of human beings hav- 
ing rudimentary tails ! I shall laugh over it to the end of my 
days ! And for the life of me, Jane, I cannot see anything in this 
letter to harrass and distress you, unless you believe his awful asser- 
tion that you — Really and truly, Jane, I would die if I were to utter 
the stupendous absurdity ! ” etc., etc., Robley, recollecting the child 
he had resuscitated and suspecting that I had found in him in some 
way the rightful heir, sank trembling into a chair and unconsciously 
let the papers in his hand fall to the floor. 

I fancied from my intimate knowledge of him for years that I 
knew the thought that was coursing in his brain, and said, “ You 
are right, Robley, in your suspicion. The woman, to whom you 
gave the child, has come here in your absence, and died, leaving the 
child in my hands — and he has the deflection described in 
the letter.” 

“ Oh Jane, Jane, you do not mean to say you have found the lost 
baby and that the baby has a tail ? And for you to tell the story se- 
riously to a physician and surgeon ? What awful delusion has taken 
possession of you ? And you, Robley, you sit there and tremble 
like old Graddy Beazley, and look as you did when you crawled out 
of the garret in Sandyvale Cemetery, like a half-drowned rat — 
tell me, really and truly as a doctor and as a man of honor, have 
human beings rudimentary tails ? ” 

“ Yes, Grace, they have. Organically speaking, human beings, 
you, Jane, I, and everybody besides, are beasts, having their nearest 
relatives among the apes and monkeys ; and in the particular of 
tails, while human beings have fewer joints in their caudal appenda- 
ges than monkeys and most of the apes, they have one joint more 
than the gorilla. The several joints forming the rudimentary tail 
of man are called collectively by anatomists the cuckoo-bone — os 
coccygeus — from a fancied resemblance in their shape to the head and 
bill of a cuckoo. And my dear wifiekin — you who regard every- 
thing novel and strange to you as ludicrous in the extreme — if you 
do not believe me, I will show you the picture of the bones in my 
4 Gray ’ and 4 Owen ’ ; and if you do not believe in a human tail 
then, you will, I am sure, when you see your dear friends, Jane and 
her Aunt Melissa, dispossessed of everything they have in the world 


278 


JANE JANSEN. 


by reason of the wagging of one a little more to the right than the 
left of the median line, in the very infant you implored me to save 
at the risk of your own precious life, during our life and death strug- 
gle in the Johnstown Flood. Your laughter, then, will turn to tears, 
and your exclamations of incredulity to lamentations of woe ; and 
you will not wonder what has made in a few short weeks a hag- 
gard wreck of Jane, with her aunt, and Arabella and her children, 
and Yalu and Cora and their children, to provide for alone should 
Philemon never ” — 

“ Oh, Robley, by your love for me, I pray you — on my knees I 
implore you, not another word !” saying which the affectionate and 
sympathetic woman, claspitig the knees of her husband, lowered her 
head and sank to the floor in a swoon. 

I was affected greatly by the shock to Grace and Robley ; and for 
several days after, I scrupulously avoided any allusion to the child 
in their presence that I might mitigate in a measure the misery 
which they felt in their sympathy with me and interest in 
my behalf. 

In the meanwhile I did not ignore the child ; but at every oppor- 
tunity, when I could do so unobserved, I was busied with him 
awake, washing and dressing him, fondling him, and teaching him 
to stand and walk alone and call me Mamma, or brooding over him 
asleep either in Cora’s cradle or in the jinrickisha of my dear little 
shadow of a brother, Jan, which I had brought down from the gar- 
ret and furnished with new cushions and wraps for his use. And to 
my great delight I found that Robley and Grace also frequently went 
in secret to the Korean cabin to play with the babe, and talk to 
each other in a low tone over him. 

At length, I was apprised by a little bird, in the shape of the 
youngest Korean girl, that Robley and Grace had taken the baby 
in the jinrickisha to Rosenborg, and that I was not to know any- 
thing about it, etc., etc. ; and on their return, Grace took up the 
child in her arms, and, in a glow of enthusiasm, came rushing into 
the room where I was engaged in sewing : followed by Robley with 
a sunburst of gladness in his face in stead of the shadows of 
gloom since his return. 

“ Oh, Jane, Jane, the dear little baby, looking right into my eyes, 
has called me Mamma ; and if you will consent, I will adopt him 
as my own ; since next to yourself who saved his life first, I, as the 
wife of Robley who breathed the breath of life into him when he 
was as dead as a doornail, have the best right of anybody living to 
him ! Then, you can be guardian of his estate ; and by the time he 
reaches the age of twenty-one, if the two of us together do not sue- 


JANE JANSEN. 


279 


ceed in making a good man of him who will recognize all we have 
done for him and assign all his interest in the Heart of Appalachia 
to you and your aunt — well, I do not know and I do not care what 
will happen twenty years hence. And Robley says it is the luckiest 
thing in the world that the child fell into your hands, instead of 
those of anybody else, who might deprive you, in the name of the 
child, of everything y6u possess in the world, except the esteem of 
your friends. And I have christened the baby already, too ; and you 
could not guess in a million years the name I have given him, in case 
you will permit me to adopt him ? No, you need not attempt it — 
Napoleon Bonaparte Benham ! For if ever there was a child of des- 
tiny before the Johnstown Flood, it was the Little Corporal from 
Corsica ; and if ever there has been a child of destiny since, it cer- 
tainly is the beautiful boy whom I hold in my arms and who has 
called me Mamma already and would like to call me so again and 
always — would you not, you deary Nappy Bony Benny ! 

“ So, it is all settled, Jane, if you say so ; and we shall all be bene- 
fited by it — you by retaining the Heart of Appalachia for nearly 
twenty years yet certainly, and forever after that most probably ; the 
baby will get the best of fathers and mothers in the world and an 
opportunity to show his gratitude to his preservers in due time ; and 
Robley and I will have a good start in the way of — Now, you need 
not shake your head, Pappy Benny, for you know very well you did 
— did he not, you little deary, you ! And you said something aw- 
ful besides, Pappy Benny — you said that if the blazon on Jane’s 
brow meant anything as you believed it did, the deflection of the 
baby’s terminal vertebrae meant something too ; and that Jane and 
the baby, accordingly, were the nature-marked Head and Tail of Hu- 
manity ! and you cannot deny that you said it, Pappy Benny, in 
those very words — can he, you little deary monkey, you ! ” 

“ But we cannot, Grace,” I replied, smiling. 

“Cannot? Well, I would like to know why we cannot? I am 
sure, you can do anything in the world ; and if Robley stands by 
me, I am sure I can do a good deal ; and ” — 

“ No, Grace, we cannot. I have consulted one of the best lawyers 
in Western Pennsylvania and have learned to my discomfiture that 
you and I are not fully grown women in the eyes of the law, but in- 
fants, like the child in your arms, and will be until we have reached 
the age of twenty-one ; and we cannot be the legal personages you 
suggest. Otherwise, I would be happy to accept your proposition.” 

“ The best of lawyers and all the lawyers be hanged ! I used to 
think Tilly Sanderson was the most meddlesome creature in the 
world ; but after I got to understand the real meaning of Mr. Clif- 


280 


JANE JANSEN. 


ford’s letter and Mr. Clifford’s actions in trying to take your home 
from you and give it to another you had never heard of before, I 
learned what a superior demon of disturbance a man may be, and I 
said I would never have anything to do with a lawyer, if I live to be 
as old as Graddy Beazley, and I will not. I am a woman and the 
wife of Dr. Robley Benham, married by a clergyman in the presence 
of my father and mother and other witnesses, and about to move 
into my own house and be the mistress of it, and if any woman is a 
woman, I certainly ” — 

Eventually, however, I succeeded in getting my dear friend to 
recognize herself as a woman, in so far as all the natural relations 
of life are concerned, and an artificial infant in the artificial world 
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and to agree with me to 
suspend all definite action with respect to the adoption of the child 
until we had attained our majority, which would be within a 
twelve-month. 

Thereupon, I wrote to Mr. Clifford, in accordance with the advice 
of Uncle John, giving him a circumstantial account of the preserva- 
tion and discovery of the child of destiny, and begging him to with- 
hold all action in the matter until I should become an artificial 
adult by the operation of time and law on the second day of 
January, 1891. 

The same day, I mailed to Philemon an account of all that had 
taken place, concealing nothing but the wretchedness of all involved 
except the unconscious infant, and exaggerating nothing but the 
cheerfulness with which I faced the future with its undreamed of 
trials and constrictions when I had written my last letter. 


LVII. 

Mv mind relieved now, I began to regain my usual health and 
composure in the sympathetic and encouraging company of Robley 
and Grace, who were busy from morning till night in putting Rosen- 
borg in order for their own occupancy and the reception of a num- 
ber of my wedding guests on the rapidly-approaching twenty -first of 
June. In fact, in arranging and re-arranging in the dear old home- 
stead, for the seemingly all-involving event of my marriage, as well 
as assisting in the preparations in the new home of my nearest and 
dearest friends and neighbors, I lost sight of my subserviency to the 
infant in the care of Cora to such an extent that, in his overwhelm- 
ing significance as an unconscious demon of destruction, he entered 


JANE JANSEN. 


281 


my mind to disturb and distress only during the silence and soli- 
tude of night. 

On the tenth, Philemon and Mrs. Wadsworth arrived in New 
York, and the following day were in the Heart of Appalachia ; Rob- 
ley having met them at the railroad station and brought them 
hither in my carriage. 

The tears of joy in my eyes perhaps magnified and beautified the 
appearance of both ; but when I saw them step from the carriage 
and stand in full view of me on the porch — with an arm of Grace 
around me, possibly as a safeguard in the event of my sinking in the 
anticipated emotion on meeting — I saw a larger man than I ever ex- 
pected to see Philemon, as straight as an arrow, his shoulders thrown 
back well, the visible muscles of his neck and face full and hard, his 
complexion a beautiful commingling of pink and tan, his yellow 
hair lustrous — the whole man luminous with life, save two large 
orbs of clouded glass which stared at me with the ghastly signifi- 
cance of the empty eye-sockets of a skull ; and I saw a larger wo- 
man than I ever expected to see Mrs. Wadsworth, a cheery old lady, 
with a white and pink complexion as soft and lustrous as a baby’s, 
in a fashionable traveling suit of grey, with a dainty hartshorn 
cruet suspended by a silver chain from her girdle, a pair of grey kid 
gloves, and a Russian leather portemonnaie in her left hand, and a 
pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses in her right, which she held before 
her bright eyes and hung on a golden hook on her bosom with the 
easy grace of a lady of affluence and refinement as a birthright. 

I did not faint. Far from it. I rushed down from the porch and 
throwing my arms around the good woman to whom the preserva- 
tion of Philemon principally was due, I expressed my grateful and 
affectionate regard by taking her in my arms and lifting and hold- 
ing her bodily from the ground, while I kissed her again and again. 

“ Stop, Jane, stop ! I can hear, if I cannot see. It is my 
turn now.” 

And while I lowered the dear old woman to the ground and still 
held her in my arms, I felt the long strong arms of Philemon fold 
around me, heard a faint crumpling of clothing about my ears and 
the top of my head, felt a pressure downward on the knot of my 
hair, and yielding to it, closed my eyes and turned up my face to 
meet Philemon’s lips with my own in a long silent kiss— as sweet, 
as satisfying, and as compensatory for all the evils and woes that 
afflict mankind, as ever cemented for an instant or a lifetime man 
and woman. 


JJ 


282 


JANE JANSEN. 


LVIII. 

On the fifteenth, Philemon and I, accompanied by Mrs. Wads- 
worth and my aunt, drove to Greenesburgh to procure our mar- 
riage license and call on Mr. Clifford, from whom I had not received 
an acknowledgement of the receipt of my letter. 

The license obtained, we went to the office of the attorney, and in 
response to our knock, heard a shuffling about in the room which 
seemed to indicate alarm and concealment by several persons. Pres- 
ently the key was turned quietly and the door opened cautiously, 
and the eyes of a young man in confusion appeared in the widening 
crack, surveying us with evident suspicion. A moment afterward, 
the door was opened wide, and we were admitted. 

We found four young men within evidently guilty of having been 
doing something of which they were ashamed and anxious to con- 
ceal ; and from the one who opened the door, who said he was a 
student of Mr. Clifford, we learned that the attorney had gone to 
California on a flying-trip to see about an investment of his own in 
San Diego, and that he was believed to be then on his way back and 
might pop in at any time. Then, having given the student my 
card and calling his attention to my letter, we were assured that he 
would bring the matter before Mr. Clifford as soon after his return as 
possible, and withdrew : Mrs. Wadsworth remarking, after we had 
passed out of earshot of the four disturbed young men, “ When the 
cat’s away, the mice will play.” 

“ Yes,” responded Philemon ; “ and if the mice happen to be stu- 
dents of law in Greenesburgh, the chances are a million to one they 
will play poker. Did not any of you that have eyes see a red or 
white button-like object on the table or floor? for a carpenter is not 
the only person in the world who may be known by his chips.” 

In the evening a number of Philemon’s early friends, learning of 
his presence in the town and the occasion of his visit, called on him 
at the Fisher House to congratulate him on his escape from the 
Johnstown Flood, even with the loss of his eyesight, and indulge in 
the usual facetious felicitations of familiar friends and playmates on 
his approaching marriage : while Mrs. Wadsworth, my aunt and I 
sat in an adjoining room to the parlor in which the men were gath- 
ered, with open doors into a common hall, hearing every word that 
was said, and whispering to one another our wonderings and shocked 
sensibilities at the freedom of speech and the informality of man- 
ners of a number of young men gathered together— bigger boys than 
those playing hide-and-seek around the corners, but still boys with 


JANE JANSEN. 


283 


so little consideration for one another’s feelings as to seem like a 
number of insensate images knocking about and jostling one an- 
other, neither hurting nor being hurt by that which would annihil- 
ate a sensitive woman. 

The following day we returned to the Heart of Appalachia. 


LIX. 

At eight o’clock in the morning of Saturday, the twenty-first day 
of June, 1890 — as bright and beautiful arid joyous a morning on the 
mountain tops of Pennsylvania as ever made existence ecstacy — my 
Aunt Melissa put the last touches to my toilet by inserting an open 
blossom of the pure-white rhododendron of the Alleghanies in the 
midst of the patch of white hairs above my forehead, and I was 
ready for the wedding ceremony which had been set for ten o’clock 
in the large parlor on the first floor. A glance in the glass, a smile 
of satisfaction, and a kiss on the lips of my dear aunt, and I hur- 
ried away to a front parlor on the second floor, where I could receive 
in private my special friends, and whence, through the slats of the 
shutters I could look down and see all that was going on below in a 
great measure without being seen myself: Cora’s second daughter, 
Minnie, being in attendance to carry messages and enable me to com- 
municate with whomsoever I wished. 

I saw a score or more of my invited guests in little groups about 
the house and barn and on the lawn. 

Here, a small party from Philadelphia, comprising an aunt, Mrs. 
Isabella Jansen, and two cousins, Miss Emily and Master Harry 
Rushenburger, ( the only relatives on my father’s side I had ever 
seen, ) and Captain Siebold, the master of “ The Wandering Alba- 
tross,” on which my father’s family had come from Japan, and who, 
during the past several years, since his retirement from the service of 
the sea, had been an occasional guest at the Heart of Appalachia : 
and among them, the first of the passengers I had taken on my raft 
in the midst of the Kernville maelstrom, the ape-like Ridger, Chip- 
pie, who in some way or other managed to escape with his life, and 
ever since regarded me in the light of an old shipmate whom, with 
perfect propriety, he could call “ Cap’in ” and u borrow a meal’s vic- 
tuals ” and a “ chaw tobaccer ” whenever he came to the inn— the 
simple man evidently now affiliating with Captain Siebold by reason 
of his service as a mule-driver on the towpath of the old State canal 
and an assistant of mine in the Johnstown Flood, and amusing the 


284 


JANE JANSEN. 


good old sea-dog greatly by a recital of his adventures. 

There, engaged in an earnest and animated conversation, Lycur- 
gus Smith, William Bainbridge, ( or Big-foot Bill, as he was known 
far and wide, for the curious reason that he had the smallest and 
neatest feet and hands among the men of his neighborhood for many 
miles around, ) and the Reverend Martin Luther Melville, whom I 
had invited to perform the marriage ceremony : the young clergyman 
being dressed in a lustrous new suit from head to foot, to secure 
which for the occasion, as I had been informed by a mountain gos- 
sip a week before, he had borrowed the money necessary from a 
storekeeper of the neighboring village and given a thirty-day 
“ close ” or “ cow-catcher ” note. 

Here, Murray Magruder, “ Long Tom ” Ankeny, and “ Painter ” 
( that is, Panther, ) Gilkison, in a semicircle before Tilly Sanderson : 
who, evidently, from her gesticulations, was giving the wondering 
hunters and foresters a history of the exchange of lovers in which 
she had played a mysterious part of the greatest importance. 

There, shaking hands with one another, ’Squire Rudolf Burk- 
holder and Uncle John Beaver, and Mother Gertrude and Aunt 
Betsy : the Good ’Squire of Johnstown and the Sage of Somerset 
presenting a striking contrast in their appearance, as representatives 
of the unconventional and conventional in life in Southwestern 
Pennsylvania: the former with a broad-brimmed straw hat in his 
left hand, his coat lying across the bend in his left arm, his vest 
open, the knot of his purple necktie under his right ear, and a red 
silk handkerchief of unusually large proportions in his right hand, 
with which betimes he mopped and wiped his face and neck ; and 
the latter looking as if he had stepped just then from the finest tailor- 
ing and furnishing establishment in the country, the best dressed 
man unquestionably among all my wedding guests. 

Here, Grace’s “ funny old miller,” by name, Harvey Bowser, Mr. 
and Mrs. Ephraim Dorsey and their two daughters, Jacob Metzgar, 
Editor Arthur St. Clair Baldridge, and the Honorable Simon Cam- 
eron Bradley, a member of the Lower House of Pennsylvania, and 
known to fame as the “ Blue-rat Legislator,” from the fact that the 
day Dr. E. A. Wood, of Pittsburgh, introduced in the Senate his bill 
to make Ground-hog Day a legal holiday, Mr. Bradley, of Somerset, 
in the House, introduced his, to purchase and set apart Somerset 
County as a State Park for the preservation of the old blue rat which 
has been exterminated in almost every other part of the country by 
the larger and more ferocious Norway rat, but which still survives in 
considerable numbers in Somerset County and has given name to 
the region, and all the inhabitants thereof, and everything per- 


JANE JANSEN. 


285 


taining thereto. 

There, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Gregory and Mr. and Mrs. Henry 
Benham, with the provisionally named child of destiny, Napoleon 
Bonaparte Benham, in the jinrickisha in their midst, and the recip- 
ient of innumerable caresses and doubtless the subject of innumer- 
able remarks. 

Here, Judge Lippincott, Colonel Thompson, ’Squire Herbert, Mrs. 
Mitchell, Mrs. Magruder, “Old Mother” Merriweather, and Professor 
Dunlap, the ambitious schoolmaster of the district, who, during the 
past month, had accepted a challenge in the newspapers to debate 
the following fall with a distinguished orator of the capital of the 
county on the subject of capital punishment, and ever afterward car- 
ried in an outside pocket a copy of one of the journals in which his 
name appeared in print. 

There, To-ga-to-maugh, alias Injin Jim, the’ Squire’s Pet Copper- 
head, and the like, in an elaborate costume of buckskin, feathers, 
and porcupine-quill-work which the ’Squire had purchased for him 
recently at Niagara Falls ; with red and black bands crossing his 
face diagonally, large white rings depending from his ears and 
the septum of his nose, and a bow and arrow in his hands : the sav- 
age surrounded by a motley throng, comprising several of my rough- 
coated collies suspiciously sniffing at his heels, ten or twelve child- 
ren, black, brown, and white, with Chin, my old Chinchu gander, 
stalking around and among them w r ith outstretched neck and utter- 
ing his peculiar note of alarm and defiance, and Lily, the eldest of 
the Korean girls, half concealed behind a clump of rhododendron, 
gazing timidly but aglow with animation at her Redskin lover in his 
resplendent savage costume. 

There, Michael O’Niel — the Good ’Squire’s Mike — in a gorgeous 
dress second only to that of Injin Jim, vainly endeavoring, with all 
the powers of persuasion and persistency which the Emerald Isle 
had bestowed on him as a birthright, to sap the foundations of the 
monumental imperturbability of Nicholas Macorquordale and be- 
guile him into regarding for a moment with appreciable pleasure the 
beautiful and happy world around him : greatly to the interest 
and amusement of several rosy-cheeked mountain maidens within 
earshot, who doubtless were a greater incentive to the young Irish- 
man to dilate on the beauty and bliss of his surroundings than any 
real desire to extract a smile from Grace’s hollow statue of Scotch 
pig-iron. 

Here, the good old physicians and surgeons, Postlewaite and 
Mansfield, and old Graddy Beazley and Pete : the latter barely rec- 
ognizable in a fashionable suit for a boy of his years in the city ; 


286 


JANE JANSEN. 


and with his early acquired knowledge of the medicinal plants of 
the mountain from the wise old woman of unknown relationship 
with whom he lived, and with his present association with Dr. Ben- 
ham, doubtless an embryonic Asklepiad in the opinion of the old 
doctors, and the subject of divers complimentary comments and 
prophesies, if the smiles of satisfaction on the faces of all stood 
for aught. 

There, a trio of tramps in conversation with one of the Ridge fid- 
dlers I had engaged to represent as well as they could Apollon and 
the Daughters of Mnemos3Uie at the marriage of the Appalachian 
Antigone : the Wandering Willies, evidently, having scented afar the 
usual liberality of a wedding-feast, now enquiring of one of the 
badged subordinates of the unseen master of ceremonies how long 
presumably they would be obliged to wait. 

Here, — 

“ Miss Jane, I beg your pardon for interrupting you ; but I have a 
note from Mr. Holland, which you are to read and reply to at once.” 

I turned from the window’ and received the following note and 
enclosure from Philemon, who had his headquarters at Rosenborg: — 

“ Dear Jane : — My grandfather just now has arrived with his par- 
ticular friend of whom he would give me no information, save the 
mystery involved in his remark, that the wedding ceremony cannot be 
performed without him. He is no less a personage than a Bishop of 
the Church of England, the Right Reverend Clarence Egerton Bar- 
rington, a life-long friend of my grandfather ; and since he has come 
over the ocean in his old age, to officiate in the ceremony of our 
marriage, in the expression of his friendship for my grandfather and 
in accordance with the special request of my broken-hearted mother, 
(as you will learn fully on perusal of the enclosed letter which she 
has sent you, ) I beg you will see your friend, the Reverend Martin 
Melville, at the earliest opportunity, and secure his gracious accept- 
ance of the undreamed of situation and withdrawal in favor, of the 
distinguished old gentleman and life-long friend from over the sea. 
We may be delayed here a few minutes perhaps — the old gentlemen 
having to unpack and array themselves appropriately for the occas- 
ion — my grandfather in a new suit which Mother Wadsworth says is 
as fine as the Prince of Wales ever did or will wear if he lives 
to be a thousand years old, and the venerable Bishop in his canoni- 
cals, of course;' but in consideration of the exceptional honor done 
us through motives which you of all women in the world will appre- 
ciate and respond to, I hope you will abide our coming with the 
happy serenity which is one of your chief characteristics among 
your friends. Philemon.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


287 


Then, on opening the enclosed letter : — 

“My Dear Miss Jansen: — A broken-hearted mother addresses 
you — the mother of one poor boy swallowed up in the awful deluge 
of your mountain city and another reduced for a month or more to 
incommensurable misery and deprived of his vision for life. Be 
charitable unto her in her weakness and sorrow, as you would that 
others be charitable unto you in the extremities of helplessness and 
woe. The enclosed ring is made of the lid of the watch which alone 
revealed the awful fate of my dear boy. You sent the lid to me, 
and as long as it remained a lid, it was invested with such associa- 
tions of Sylvester that I could not endure to have it in existence. I 
have had it melted — the gold purified and cast into the form of a 
ring ; and I send it to you, in the last faint hope of my broken heart, 
that you will be married with it to my poor blind boy, that, in the 
instant you become my daughter, you will invest it with such new 
associations of life and love as will soften to endurance, in the wan- 
ing years of my life, the agonizing old. With it, accept my blessing : 
May the happiness that has been mine, as a wife and mother, be 
yours, without my woe. Mary (Jerome) Holland.” 

I sent for Mr. Melville and handed him the letters, without say- 
ing a word ; and before he had finished Philemon’s note, he replied 
interjectionally as he continued to read, “ Certainly, Miss Jansen — 
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to step aside for the 
venerable Bishop — a great honor, I assure you — I appreciate the sit- 
uation — and you are remarkably calm and placid — but I doubt not, 
like the ocean that at one time is as calm and smooth as a mirror, at 
another, when aroused and upheaved from your unfathomable 
depths by a sense of duty in an emergency, you would be an irre- 
sistible mountain wave ! But what is this? — Most affecting words — 
Enough to break the poor woman’s heart — A happy, happy thought 
in her misery to change the associations connected with the metal 
from death to life, and from desolation in the past to love in the 
future — And what a width of meaning and depth of feeling in the 
poor woman’s simple blessing! — Of course, }mu will accept the ring 
and be married with it by the venerable Bishop of England — of 
course, of course — And in stepping aside for the Bishop, I am doing 
one of the most pleasurable acts of my life.” 

The reverend gentleman left me alone ; and having determined 
what to do while he spoke, I wrote the following note to Philemon 
and sent it to him by Yoko, in waiting for an answer at the door. 

“ My Dear Philemon : — With compliments and grateful appreci- 
ation of the honor intended, please convey my regrets to your 
highly-respected grandfather and his distinguished friend, the vener- 


288 


JANE JANSEN. 


able Bishop, that I cannot be married in the way they and your 
sadly bereaved mother desire. I have insuperable objections to the 
use of a ring in the marriage ceremony, and the sentiments express- 
ed in the marriage service of the Episcopal or Anglican Church. 

Yours, etc., Jane.” 

A few minutes after Yoko’s departure, while I was putting the 
ring and letters in a drawer of the table in the room, I was startled 
by a great commotion among the ladies and gentlemen on the floor 
beneath me, on the front porch, and around about the big stone 
house. I thought either the house or barn was afire; and realizing 
instantly that I occupied and held the property without any right 
or title that I would recognize, and that I was responsible for its 
preservation, I stood for a moment in shuddering alarm. Hearing 
peals of laughter, however, commingled with the screams of the wo- 
men and the shouts of the men and boys, I bounded, in the relief I 
felt, to the window, and beheld through the slats a large swarm of 
bees alighting on the keystone of the arch which Robley and Yoko 
had erected in front of the main entrance the day before, and cov- 
ered with hemlock and rhododendron ; and in the reaction of my 
feelings, I could not refrain from laughter at the ludicrous scenes I 
witnessed, in several of which Pete — by reversion suddenty from the 
civilization of a city to the savagery of the mountain wilds — was a 
principal figure, slipping about with a blade of timothy in his 
hands, and slyly touching with its tip the cars of Judge and Colo- 
nel alike to put them to flight at once. As the bees, however, began 
to form a pendent cone under the keystone, the excitement among 
the scattered wedding-guests abated, and gradually even the most 
fearful among them approached through curiosity to behold the out- 
come of the invasion of the uninvited. At length, an empty hive 
having been brought to the porch by Yoko’s brother, the Reverend 
Martin Melville took off his coat to officiate in one ceremony if not 
in another during the day, stepped boldly toward the swarm, and 
called for a table and a stand to make a platform under the arch on 
which to place the empty box that the swarm might be shaken into 
it and secured without further trouble. 

“Lookout, parson! You’ll be stung to death ! ” cried a dozen 
voices at once. 

“ Ha! I’ll take the stings and never feel them, so be it the bride 
get the honey ! There never was a happier omen of good fortune 
than this ; but the swarm must be hived by wisdom and care, and 
not lost by — Well, there is one under my left eye to begin with ! But 
no matter — will not some one bring me Miss Jansen’s veil ? ” 

“ Her bridal veil? 0 monstrous ! monstrous ! parson ! ” exclaim- 


JANE JANSEN. 


289 


ed Judge Lippincott. 

“No, most captious Judge ; her b- veil, without the -ridal,” re- 
sponded the reverend gentleman promptly, with a mock deferential 
bow ; and the ripple of laughter against the pulpit increased to a roar 
against the bench. 

At this juncture, I was about to send instructions to Mr. Melville ; 
but observing that he was not inexperienced wholly in the mystery 
of hiving bees,i I turned from the window* to learn the cause of a 
commotion which I heard on the stairway and in the hall behind me. 

As I suspected, it was the bishop, whom Robley had brought into 
the house by a side entrance, without attracting the attention of the 
throng around the bees and Mr. Melville, and wdthout subjecting the 
venerable man to the danger of being stung. 

I was impressed deeply and favorably by the kindly nature of the 
distinguished divine, which was apparent to me in every curve of 
his well-rounded body and every extension of these physical curves 
in his graceful movements, but especially in the lineaments of his 
slightly-flushed face beneath a generous canopy of lustrous yellow- 
white hair, and audible in the deep rich tone of his voice. 

After presenting us — not the venerable bishop to the young bride, 
nor the young bride to the bishop, but, at the same time, each to the 
other, Robley happily mastered the question of etiquette involved 
in our introduction, and left us, with the remark, as he bowed at the 
door, “ I warn you again, Bishop Barrington, to be on your guard. 
Miss Jansen from childhood has been obliged to think and act for 
herself and has acquired such independence of thought and action 
among men in her diversified career, and such self-reliance, as to 
make her an antagonist not to be opposed rashly by anybody. The 
statue before you is not stone.” 

The bishop smiled at the speech of Robley, as an indirect compli- 
ment to me rather than a direct warning to him, and began to talk 
to me with the easy indifference of over-assurance in having me set 
aside my objections in a few minutes. 

I listened attentively and respectfully to everything he said, but 
sat unmoved, and made no reply ; preferring to await the termina- 
tion of his discourse and make what answer I might to the whole 
rather than engage in a desultory and incomplete altercation. The 
clock struck ten a little while after he began ; and my immobility 
provoking him to more earnest and better directed efforts than at 
first, he became emotional and eloquent, and thrilled me again and 
again by the harmony and beauty of his sentences, which to a 
greater or less extent involved sentiments to which my being re- 

KK 


290 


JANE JANSEN. 


sponded instantly. Both he and I were insensible to the flight 
of time; and the clock struck eleven before he, wiping the profuse 
perspiration from his roseate face and neck, concluded with the re- 
mark, that if I was not satisfied to withdraw my objections now, 
as a rational creature I should give him in fairness my reasons. 

I said to him, “ I have listened to you, defferentially and rever- 
ently from the beginning to the end of your discourse ; and I will 
make reply only on one condition, that is, that you permit me, a 
young woman, to address you, not in your official capacity as a rep- 
resentative of the Anglican Church, (which, like the English Empire 
itself, extends its ramifications and influence into every part of the 
inhabitable globe, and which overwhelms me in my insignificance as 
an individual,) but as a man — a son, a father, and a grandfather as 
you may be, but, whatsoever your family relations, a man among 
women and children and men, and realizing as such your relations 
to your fellow human beings.” 

“ With pleasure and preference ; so be it you continue to express 
yourself as you have begun.” 

“ As a man, then,” I proceeded directly, “ you say, Mrs. Holland 
is rich and I am poor, and that it is impolitic in me to oppose the 
last wish perhaps of her breaking heart. I say, there are six men of 
wealth on the floor beneath us, who, from their knowledge of me 
from childhood, believe that all the wealth of England would not 
tempt me to do that which my instinctive and acquired knowledge 
of right and wrong condemns ; and in their good opinion, I am as 
wealthy a woman as I wish to be. And in conclusion on this point, 
I beg to remind you, — as a man, remember — that we are here on a 
mountain-top, where the tempter and the tempted have met before. 

“ Further, as a man you say that a self-sacrificing spirit character- 
izes the noblest types of humanity, while a contrary spirit of self- 
preservation or self-aggrandizement at the cost of others character- 
izes the basest. By this, you put the unhappy Mrs. Holland in a 
plight you little dreamed of, I am sure. She makes no sacrifice of 
herself for the benefit of another, but solicits — unintentionally and 
unwittingly, of course — the sacrifice of another for her relief. I sym- 
pathize with her in her suffering with my whole being, but I am not 
justified, by reason of my sympathy, in sacrificing myself, or any 
principle inseparable from my conscious existence, to better her con- 
dition. In conclusion on this point, I beg to say the principle that 
underlies self-sacrifice is this : It is good when it involves theoreti- 
cally the preservation of the species, or mankind ; as when a father or 
mother sacrifices self for the preservation of children ; an aged person 
for an infant; or the opposing and supplemental sexes for each other, 


JANE JANSEN. 


291 


as a man for a woman, or a girl for a boy ; and conversely, it is bad 
when it involves theoretically the destruction of mankind — a suicide, 
for reasons affecting self alone, being, accordingly, the ultimatum of 
evil, equalled only by murder. By way of illustration, Abraham 
sacrificing his son to secure benefits for himself, is an exhibition of 
early Jewish savagery ; while Abraham sacrificing himself to secure 
benefits for his son, would be an exhibition of later Christian civil- 
ization. 

u Further, as a man you say, with respect to the symbolic use of the 
ring in the marriage ceremony, To the pure all things are pure, and 
Evil to him that evil thinks. I say, To the pure, in accordance with 
their comprehension, all things are either pure or impure, elevating 
or degrading, to be accepted on the one hand or refused on the 
other, if they would remain pure ; and Evil to him that knows his 
right hand from his left, in the world of ethics illuminated by the 
experience of mankind for ages, and goes not to the right in the face 
of fire and flood, rather than to the left in the way of ease and en- 
chantment. In conclusion on this point, I beg to say I know the 
significance of the ring in the ceremony of marriage, which has de- 
scended to us from our barbaric ancestors who made use of visible 
signs and symbols of apparent import where we employ now au- 
dible speech of vastly greater comprehension and precision ; and 
knowing the significance to be such that the bride was veiled to con- 
ceal her blushes, in the old barbaric times of signs and symbols in- 
stead of speech, I have determined to be married without the sym- 
bolic ring and the consequential and essential veil. In becoming the 
wife of the honorable man whom I love, in the sight of all who are 
near and dear to me, save himself in his blindness, I hope neither to 
blush for shame nor blanch for fear ; and you as a man, I believe, 
will not ask me to do either. 

“ Finally, with respect to the sentiments expressed in the marriage 
service of the Anglican or Episcopal Church, you say — as a man, re- 
member — that you are familiar with it as a whole and in detail ; 
and from all you know of it from your own understanding, and have 
read of it and heard of it, you believe it unobjectionable in aught 
that it contains, and that you cannot conceive of an objection which 
any fair-minded and pure-hearted person could make to it. I say — 
or rather, before I say a word, I beg leave to read a few short sen- 
tences from the Books of the Hebrews which contain all that is 
known of the two exemplars of married life, Isaac and Rebekah, 
mentioned in the Anglican service.” 

Taking down my Bible from a hanging shelf on the wall, I 
turned to the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis, and began to 


292 


JANE JANSEN. 


read at the sixth verse:— 

“ 6. And Isaac dwelt in Gerar. 

“ 7. And the men of the place asked him of his wife ; and he said, 
She is my sister : for he feared to say, She is my wife ; lest, said he, 
the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah ; because she was 
fair to look upon. 

“ 8. And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, 
that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and 
saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. 

“ 9. And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she 
is thy wife : and how saidst thou, She is m3 7 sister ? And Isaac said 
unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her. 

“ 10. And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us ? 
one of the people might lightly have lain with thy wife, and thou 
shouldst have brought guiltiness upon us.” 

u Now, I say,” resuming my reply to the venerable bishop, who sat 
motionless, with his head lowered and his neck and face flushed to 
a crimson hue, “ Isaac and Rebekah, as described in the Bible, are 
execrable barbarians ; and as exemplars of man and wife in this age 
of enlightenment and refinement are an insult to true manhood and 
true womanhood ; and I sincerely believe that you, as a man, cannot 
go down stairs into the parlor, and, in the presence of the good men 
and women assembled there, lay your hand upon your heart, and 
say to Philemon Holland, in the language of the Episcopal service, 
to be unto me as Isaac was unto Rebekah ; and say to me, to be 
unto Philemon Holland as Rebekah was unto Isaac ; for, remember- 
ing what I have read to }*ou of their disgraceful conduct even in 
the eyes of Abimelech in the barbarous age in which they lived, 
you cannot ask Philemon Holland to deny me in public as his wife 
like a dastard through fear, and make a common commodity of my 
person for his advancement in life ; and you cannot ask me to sub- 
mit to such dishonor and degradation ; or if you can, be you the 
Bishop of Bishops of the Christian world, and backed by the plead- 
ings of Philemon, as well as his broken-hearted mother, YOU 
SHALL NOT!” 

“ I cannot, Miss Jansen,” replied the venerable bishop, rising to 
his feet, and expanding his lungs ; “ and since 3 T ou have called m3 T 
attention to this particular passage in the Bible and expounded its 
significance in the Episcopal marriage service, affecting, as it does in 
the most serious manner, the marital relations of millions upon mil- 
lions of mankind, I will rip these holy vestments into tatters and 
sever m3 7 connection with the great church which heretofore in my 
estimation has been a faultless ultimatum of goodness and wisdom in 


JANE JANSEN. 


293 


the hearts and homes of humanity, before I will unite man and wo- 
man in the holy bonds of wedlock, in any ceremony that employs 
the symbolic ring of a barbarous age and these execrable exemplars 
of man and wife in this era of enlightenment and refinement, as you 
happily have termed them, Isaac and Rebekah. I thank you, Miss 
Jansen, for the grandest exegesis of ethics I have ever listened to 
and the most effective : I am rewarded in it and amply for coming 
across the Atlantic in my old age ; for I shall return with a new idea, 
which, in my long life of dog-eared commonplaces and threadbare 
conventionalities, is worth a trip around the world. And now, re- 
gretting my vows will not permit me to marry you, save in the man- 
ner prescribed in our ritual, I beg leave to withdraw and sit among 
your guests while another officiates with an acceptable service.” 

In great perturbation, the venerable man left me ; and in a few 
minutes after he had descended to the hall on the first floor, I 
caught enough of his conversation with his old friend, Philemon’s 
grandfather, Jules Jerome, and Robley, that he was reporting to 
them the substance of our long interview aright. 

“ Well, I must see this wonderful girl that has overwhelmed a 
bishop of the Church of England with shame and confusion — this 
marvelous mountain maiden that makes all men bow down before 
her in worship of her womanly beauty and womanly worth com- 
bined with a great man’s mental powers — this prodigy that is about 
to become my daughter and my imperial sovereign doubtless for the 
remainder of my days — Come, Dr. Benham, I beseech you, let us 
waive all ceremony, and present me at once to Miss Jansen.” 

Hearing them come up the stairs, I retired to the part of the room 
in which, before an artistically draped curtain of a rich crimson in a 
carefully arranged light, I appeared in my white raiment to the best 
advantage — in repose, a Grecian statue as nearly as my Grecian fea- 
tures, form, and dress could combine to make me appear. 

On catching a glimpse of me, however, over the shoulders of Rob- 
ley, as they came to the door, the old man pushed the young aside, 
and came into the room and stood before me in such amazement, 
( with the fingers of his left hand thrust up through the grey hairs 
on the left side of his head, his left foot forward, and his body 
thrown backward on his right, his mouth open, and his eyes fixed 
on mine, ) that I became embarrassed ; and, advancing a step toward 
him and extending my hand, I said, “ You are Mr. Jerome, I pre- 
sume, my future grandfather.” 

“ I am nobody — nobody — nobody, until I know who you are in 
reality,” said the staring old man, stepping back from me two paces 
farther than I had advanced toward him. 


294 


JANE JANSEN. 


“ I am Jane Jansen,” I replied, resuming my former position. 

“ But your father, who was he ? ” 

“ A whaler, Jan Jansen, by name, and of Dutch origin.” 

“ And your mother? ” 

u Helen Graham, a daughter of Alexander Graham.” 

“ No, my child, you are neither Dutch nor Scotch.” 

“ I was born in the Harbor of Yokohama. Perhaps that will solve 
the enigma before you.” 

“ Well, truly, you are as much of a Japanese as you are either 
Dutch or Scotch ; for you are a Greek, if ever there was one on the 
seaboard of the iEgean.” 

“ Yes, my maternal grandmother was a Greek, and I am said to be 
her counterpart.” 

“ And she was — I will stake my life on the venture — Margaret 
Zampelios ? ” 

“ And keep your life for another venture, for you have named 
her aright.” 

“ And this grandson of mine that is about to marry you, did he 
fall in love with you the instant you met for the first time ? ” 

“ No ; but I may truly say that I have loved him from the mo- 
ment we met to the present time.” 

“ The varlet ! For by that token I know that he is not a grandson 
of mine.” 

“ Nay, good Father Jerome, be not too fast. We were children 
when we saw each other first; and when we met again, Philemon 
was a man, and although engaged to he married to the sweet woman 
who is now Dr. Benham’s wife, he became enamored with me 
at once.” 

“That settles it and forever. He has his grandsire’s blood in his 
veins — he is his grandsire as nearly as a descendant can be an 
ancestor, for as he became enamored with you, so I became enamor- 
ed with your grandmother ; but Philemon’s mother, to whom I had 
sworn to be true and with whom I had lived happily, was still in 
existence; and I stole away from your grandmother to save my wife 
and child from the misery and shame of a recreant husband and 
father, myself from the eternal tortures of a guilty conscience, and 
your grandmother, perhaps, from a union with a man in my posi- 
tion then absolutely unworthy of her. And what became of your 
grandmother, in my world-wide search for my child, on the death of 
her mother in France while I was in India, I never learned till this 
moment. Now, give me your hand, my child, and let me feel again 
the pulse that has thrilled my very existence a half a century ago. 
Time at last sets all things even. Our loves and loathings lie deeper 


JANE JANSEN. 


295 


than self — in onr blood ; and if not in one generation, in another, a 
third, or fourth, the man and woman who love each other truly will 
come together from the opposite sides of the globe. This is my 
wedding day and that of your dead and buried grandmother, as well 
as Philemon’s and your own. And since my surname Jerome is a 
shortened form of the Greek Hieronymo, I doubt not Philemon and 
I have Greek blood in our hearts as well as you ; and it is not be- 
yond the pales of possibility and probability that our ancestors time 
and again have loved one another beneath the glorious aegis of Pallas 
Athene. Happy, happy, ineffably happy day ! ” 

“ Nay, not too fast, Father Jerome,” I interjected facetiously, and 
rather from a superficial understanding of his words than a realiza- 
tion of their profound significance. “ When Greek meets Greek, 
then comes the tug of war — not billing and cooing. I am inclined 
to think it was rather the more amiable Dutch blood of the Hollands 
and the Jansens that counteracted the warlike of the Hieronymos 
and the Zampelioses in Philemon and myself, and caused us to unite 
in peace and love; and that the scene of our ancestral courtship is 
rather the hollow land which the Dutch have made to suit them- 
selves below the level of the surrounding sea, with all their hills 
in intaglio, as it were, than the mountain-ribbed peninsula of the 
Stone Men of Hesiodos and Pindaros.” 

“ Confound the Dutch — and your confounding facetiousness, my 
daughter! ” exclaimed the old gentleman, a little tartly, with rising 
color, and increasing vehemence; indicating very plainly that he was 
not in the habit of meeting opposition meekH. “ The Dutch, if 
they had their deserts, would be to-day in the abysmal depths of the 
ocean from which they have filched their uncertain foothold on the 
planet! With their teachings of liberty and independence in 
thought and action, their secret ballot giving every man a certain 
and uncontrollable influence in the affairs of state, and the like, 
( which are all right now but which were all wrong then, ) they did 
more to separate Great Britain and her American Colonies than any 
other outside people on the face of the globe. Had they all been 
drowned two hundred years ago, with the spirit of independence 
which they acquired through their protracted struggle with the 
Spanish, Greater Britain, or the United States of the World, would be 
to-day a close approximation to a Federation of Mankind. And 
while, my daughter, there is undoubtedly Dutch blood in both of 
you, it is to the predominating and strongly characterizing Greek, in 
yourself especially, as the husk is to the corn, the matrix of quartz 
to the gold it contains, the label on the bottle to the wine within. 
There is nothing in nature isolated. We are all compounds and 


296 


JANE JANSEN. 


compromises of infinite import, with a certain overbalancing, which 
gives us racial and individual characteristics ; and that overbalan- 
cing in you, in despite of your Dutch father, your birth in Japan, 
and the greater part of your life spent in the Heart of Appalachia, 
makes you — well, to utter the thought that pervades my whole be- 
ing at this instant— -your own Greek grandmother, Margaret Zam- 
pelios, whom I loved, and who, I believe, from all that has taken 
place then and now, loved me. But I must go — I must go, to re- 
port a greater surprise to my good old friend, Bishop Barrington, 
than he reported to me.” 

What a revelation this was to me! I could not realize it fully; 
but the sincerity of the old man, combined with his striking resem- 
blance to Philemon in form and feature and movement, convinced 
me that he spoke the truth ; and when he retired, I said to Robley, 
w r ho was present during the interview, “ I am said by my aunt to be 
the exact counterpart of my grandmother, with the exception of this 
blazon on my brow of my mother’s days and nights of agony before 
I was born ; if so, I do not doubt that she loved this man at sight: 
I would, I feel and know, as I loved Philemon. Now, Robley, go 
down stairs and get everybody and everything in readiness for the 
ceremony. Our guests have been kept in waiting too long already ; 
and the hour set for dinner will come in a little wfflile.” 

“ But what shall we do for a minister? Bishop Barrington can- 
not, consistently with his vows, and Mr. Melville has one eye closed 
by the sting of a bee, and ” — 

“ He can see still the persons to be married and the printed page 
before him, with the other.” 

“ But he presents such a ludicrous appearance, with one side of 
his face passive and distorted and the other mobile and normal, as if 
he were afflicted with Bell’s paralysis, that he will make every- 
body in the room laugh outright, from the venerable bishop to 
’Possum Pete.” 

“ So much the better. Better laughter than tears at a wedding a 
thousand times over.” 

“ As you will have it, then, Jane : though it be the death of one in 
the room at least.” 

“ Your charming wifiekin. Well, well, she has died so often in 
the past through her supersensitive sense of the ridiculous that I be- 
lieve we can risk her dying again on this occasion : especially since 
her husband has had some success in resuscitating the dead. Now, 
be off; and if you see any mail for me in the rack as you pass, 
please send it up, that I may see what my absent friends have to say 
for themselves on this occasion — and that I may be able to keep 


JANE JANSEN. 


297 


calm and collected for the trying ceremony.” 

Among the letters he sent to me, I observed one with the address 
of the attorney-at-law, Mr. Clifford, on the corner of the envelope, 
and opened it first. 

“ My Dear Miss Jansen : — I beg leave to congratulate you again. 
The Dobson heir should be a girl, as you will see by the certificate 
of the, physician which I enclose, The boy you have is doubtless 
the lost child of Henry and Sarah Milburn, who, as I learned during 
my search for the Dobson child, , had the same deflection to the right 
of the tip of the vertebral column. I have notified them of your 
discovery ; and presumably they will go to see you and the child at 
the earliest opportunity. I have given them a letter of introduction 
to you. They are worthy, wealthy people, and you will be perfectly 
safe in putting the child into their hands. 

“ Hoping this letter will reach you before you have made a greater 
surrender to another — of yourself as well as your worldly possess- 
ions ; and wishing you a continuance of your good fortune through 
life, I remain, Yours Truly, Andrew J. Clifford.” 

How I looked and what I did, w r hile I was reading this letter and 
for a moment afterward, I do not know ; but Minnie in waiting, see- 
ing something in the expression of my face, or my unconscious 
movements, that alarmed her, ran into the hall screaming for help ; 
and a moment later Robley came bounding up the stairs and into 
the room as pale as ashes, followed by my aunt and Grace, and poor 
Philemon, with his left arm before his blind eyes and his right 
reaching tremblingly here and there for something to guide him to 
me. With a word, I assured them that whatever had happened, I 
was not in distress ; and having closed the door of the room to ex- 
clude the gathering throng of excited and anxious guests to learn the 
cause of the alarm, I kissed Philemon and Grace, and hung on the 
neck of my dear aunt, while Robley read aloud the letter and the 
certificate. 

“ Well, of all the ludicrous blunders that ever were made on this 
mundane sphere of mistakes and stumblings, this stands pre-emi- 
nent ! ” exclaimed Grace, the first to speak after the reading of the 
certificate ; “ mistaking a boy for a girl ! and all because human be- 
ings have rudimentary tails that sometimes wag to the right and 
subordinate all other physical characteristics, including those of sex ! 
If only one of you would join me in laughing, I really and truly be- 
lieve I wrnuld ” — 

“ Oh, do not wifiekin, I beseech you : this is too serious a matter 
for you to die over as you die a hundred times a day. It means 

LL 


298 


JANE JANSEN. 


that Aunt Melissa and Jane still own the Heart of Appalachia, and 
that instead of owing the baby, whom you have christened Napoleon 
Bonaparte, anything, the baby and his father and mother, Henry 
and Sarah Milburn, owe us collectively the value of his preservation 
— a debt, I doubt not, which we are all willing to cancel without an- 
other word.” 

“ Well, why did not the lawyer say so, then? If attorneys-at-law 
would talk like doctors, I could understand them, and — Come 
Auntie and Jane, let me kiss you both at once, in the expression of 
my congratulations from the bottom of my heart of hearts on your 
good fortune.” 

This double osculation over, I took up another letter, which, from 
its appearance, contained an enclosure, and, evidently from the 
handwriting on the envelope, was not from a familiar friend ; re- 
marking, as I opened it, “ It never rains but it pours. Let us see if 
the old proverb prove true in the matter of good fortune.” 

“Johnstown, Pa., 18 June, 1890. 

“ Miss Jane Jansen, 

The Heart of Appalachia. 

“ I take great pleasure in sending you a relic of the Johnstown 
Flood. It is of no value to me or anybody in the world but your- 
self — to whom, as the sole legatee of the old Jew peddler, Gershom 
Pearlesteine, deceased, as nearly as I can calculate the interest on the 
numerous deposits in the Dollar Savings Bank of Pittsburgh, is 
worth to-day $17,992. The enclosure is the old man’s bank-book. 
It has been saturated with the muddy water and stained through 
and through ; but the writing in it is still legible. By one, who saw 
the will before it was given to you, I have been informed that the 
witnesses to it reside in Pittsburgh. Accordingly, you will find no 
trouble in having it probated. Employ a good attorney to see that 
everything is done properly. I am, with the best of wishes for your 
welfare in life — and regrets that the figures are not six — 

A Friend — 

who owes in great part the preservation of his aged mother to you, 
by taking her on your raft to Sandyvale Cemetery, where she re- 
mained in a tree-top until rescued at midnight.” 

“ In round numbers, eighteen thousand dollars ! ” Robley re- 
marked, beaming with joy ; “ enough to keep the wolf from the 
door, with care and economy, to the end of your days. You are 
getting now your well-merited reward, Jane, and I am heartily 
glad of it.” 

I opened the enclosure and found the bank-book as described in 
the letter; and after we had examined it — all save Philemon, staring 


JANE JANSEN. 


299 


blindly through his smoked glasses — and commented on it, I put all 
the papers and the precious book into the hands of my aunt ; re- 
marking, “ Keep them, Auntie, till to-morrow. The downpour has 
been certainly enough for one day — sufficient at any rate to enable 
me to become this dear man’s wife w T ith the lightest of hearts that 
ever fluttered with happiness in a woman’s bosom — Grace’s except- 
ed, of course, when she became Robley’s wifiekin. Now, Robley, 
please, do you and Grace go before and make way for us, and Phile- 
mon and I will follow and be made man and wife without any 
further delay.” 


LX. 

Happily, by the time we descended to the parlor, everybody about 
the house but Philemon and myself were familiar with the facial 
disfigurement of the officiating minister, Mr. Melville, and unaffect- 
ed by it, and the ceremony was performed with due solemnity. At 
the conclusion, the venerable bishop stepped forward, and, in a most 
impressive manner, pronounced a formal benediction as a bishop and 
an informal blessing as a man — thrilling me to the marrow, when, in 
the latter, he alluded to the blazon on my brow as a banner of in- 
herited womanly worth of the highest type which I had borne 
worthily in the struggle of existence; and which revealed me, in the 
eyes of all discerning men, the Edelweiss of Appalachia; and as 
well, when he referred to the blindness of Philemon as a loss 
not without a compensating gain, inasmuch as he would see the 
world henceforth through the eyes of the nature-marked woman of 
worth at his side, and see only the pure separated from the im- 
pure, the good from the bad, and the expanding and exalting, 
honorable and holy, from the contracting and debasing, iniqui- 
tous and vile ! 

“ Amen ! ” Mr. Melville responded fervently ; and one and all in 
the room repeated the solemn word of assent with such emotion, 
that responding to it, I put my arms around my husband’s neck, 
and buried my face in his bosom. 


LXI. 


Two tables had been set for the occasion, a large — for sixty or 
more — under the shade of a spreading elm at the northwest corner 


300 


JANE JANSEN. 


of the great stone house, for my mountain neighbors and friends, 
and the young people generally, and a small — for twenty-four in 
the dining-room of the inn, for my more particular friends and dis- 
tinguished guests ; and the dinner hour for the first, or larger, having 
come, Philemon and I went out and sat down on the bench by the 
side of the table opposite Mr. Melville, and, after grace by the rever- 
end gentleman, ate a bite and drank a sip with our rather boisterous 
guests, in despite of the restraints imposed on the majority by the 
presence of the minister at the middle of the table, and ’Squire Rem- 
aley, the well-known Justice of the Peace, and the imperturbable 
Nicholas Macorquordale at the opposite ends, and my pet crow, 
Muggins, flying over their heads, threatening to steal a bite from 
anybody who neglected for a moment knife and fork and the viands 
on his plate through an excess of hilarity. Mr. Melville, Philemon, 
and I then withdrew amid general cheers to the house, and took the 
places assigned to us at the table in the dining-room, among our 
nearest and dearest friends and most distinguished guests, and in the 
midst of a little world of the most agreeable surprises to me, which, 
perhaps it was not absolutely proper for me to observe at all, but 
which I did see in silence and conjecture about not only from the 
time I entered the room until I left it, but from that time to this. 
The very carpet on the floor and the blinds and curtains at the win- 
dows were new and fine ; the sideboard, the table, and the chairs 
were new and of a most pleasing artistic design ; the tablecloth and 
the napkins were new and of the finest linen; the candelabra, the 
glassware, and the odds and ends of the table furnishing were new 
and surprisingly rich and beautiful ; the forks and spoons, of several 
sizes, were new and marked with the initials J. J. H. ; the knives 
and the carving set were new and particularly beautiful in the con- 
trast presented by polished silver and gleaming steel in combination 
with iridescent mother of pearl ; and the elaborate service of Japan- 
ese ware was new and ineffably pleasing to me in the exquisite fan- 
tasy of dear old Fuji depicted in one or another form on every 
piece ; and the waiters were new and strange — a middle-aged portly 
negro, of great gravity and gracious courtesy, in a gentleman’s ball- 
room suit, as a head or master waiter, and four young negro men as 
subordinates, in black broadcloth suits also, with the addition of 
large white pinafores, a towel hanging over the bend of the left arm, 
and a glistening Japanese tray in the left hand ; and the chef in the 
kitchen unseen but faintly heard betimes was a stranger with an old 
man’s voice ; and for the first time in the history of the Heart of 
Appalachia as an inn, a printed and beautifully decorated menu lay 
by the side of every plate. 


JANE JANSEN. 


301 


The enchantment of Scheherezade never wrought such a marvelous 
transformation ! I suspected that Father Jerome, and Robley’s 
father and mother, with the assistance of Robley and Grace, and the 
connivance of my dear Aunt Melissa, had been all the genii, the 
wonderful lamps, and the all-potent talismans, to produce in secret 
all I saw ; but as I had been kept in absolute ignorance of what they 
were doing, the effect to me w T as that of enchantment — and of the 
most agreeable kind. I cast furtive glances around at the suspected 
magicians, but failed to find a betraying smile even on the face of 
Grace ; and after the bishop, at one end of the table, facing Father 
Jerome at the other, had voiced our common grateful acknowledge- 
ments to the Idealized Provider of all-involving import, like those 
around me, with an affected indifference to the really surprising and 
delightful display, I took up the menu before me and read: — 

“ The Horn of Amaltheia at the Wedding Feast of Jane Jansen 
and Philemon Holland, in the Heart of Appalachia, Saturday, the 
21st day of June, 1890. 

“ Io Bakche ! 

“ I. Snapping Turtle : sodden in a broth. With Wheat Bread, 
toasted. 

“ II. Brook Trout : broiled over hickory coals. With Buckwheat 
Biscuit and Water Cress. 

“ III. Frog : fried in butter. With Yellow Maize Slap-jack, baked 
in hickory ashes. 

“ IV. Wild Turkey and Peafowl : steamed and roasted. With 
Apple-sauce, Pokeberry Shoots, Wild Plum Jelly, Cucumber Pickles, 
Cheese, and Rye Bread. 

“ V. Pig, Lamb, and Ox : roasted. With New Potatoes, Peas, 
Beans, Beets, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Olives, Currant Jelly, Jersey But- 
ter, and Wheat Bread. 

“VI. Pigeon: baked in a pie. With Noodles, Oaten Scone, 
Bonny-clabber, and White Clover Honey. 

“ VII. Currant : in tart. 

“ VIII. Strawberry and Red Raspberry : fresh from field and 
patch. With Lady Cake. 

“ IX. Jersey Cream : frozen. With Macaroon, 

“X. Butternut and Shellbark Hickory-nut: cracked. With 
Sweetmeats. 

“ XI. Quince : in jam, a la grecque. With Bride Cake. 

“ XII. Rice : boiled and baked in a cake. With Peaberry Coffee : 
roasted and pulverized in a mortar, in an infusion. 

“ Io Bakche ! 

“ Water, Milk, Cream, Buttermilk, Lemonade, Beer, Claret, Sherry, 


302 


JANE JANSEN. 


Dry Champagne, Sweet Champagne, Brandy, and the Nectar of 
Appalachia, otherwise Old Monongahela Whiskey: served as direct- 
ed by Guests.” 

As I read, I was surprised and delighted at the apparent fitness of 
the several viands constituting a course, the happy sequence of the 
courses, and the appropriateness of the whole as an Appalachian 
wedding feast, with divers involvings with special reference to the 
bride, or myself ; and gradually, I began to doubt the reality of the 
bill of fare and look on it as a happy conceit of the magicians to 
double the delights of the repast, by giving first a Barmecidal feast 
of ideal completeness, and then a substantial of a very different 
character in realitx^. 

As I laid down the printed bill in doubt, however, Father Jerome, 
at one end of the table abruptly addressed his old friend at the 
other, “ I say — I beg your pardon, Bishop Barrington, but did 1 un- 
derstand you to say brandy ? ” 

“ No, Mr. Jerome,” replied the bishop grayely. “ As nearly as I 
can tell from my limited knowledge of the geography of the Ameri- 
can Continent, I am in Southwestern Pennsylvania, the only place in 
the world, I believe, where the people ever went to war about whis- 
key ; and being a veritable stranger in a strange land, I cannot do 
better than follow the first of the commandments which all good 
travelers carry with them when they go abroad — and leave all the 
others behind them at home. I shall do in Rome as the Romans do, 

and drink milk first, and, perhaps, a little Old Monongahela 

afterward.” 

“ Well said, Bishop Barrington, but perhaps needlessly ; for a rea- 
son is required rather for not drinking than drinking, when good 
liquor is set before an honest man after he has turned the corner of 
thirty, or forty, or thereabout, like ourselves. And milk first and a 
little Old Monongahela afterward, . I dare say will make a passable 
punch ; but I regret I cannot join you ; for I never like to mix my 
drinks — I will stick to brandy, so be it it be French. For while I 
hate the French, next to the Dutch, for the part they took in 
separating Old Mother England and her American children, I can 
drink French brandy with a relish that makes me forget for the time 
being my enmity to its liquor-loving manufacturers — and do so 
whenever I get a chance. And you, Mr. Melville — yes, I see you 
tip me a wink, and a most decided wink with the left eye at 
that !— you will take brandy with me rather than milk first and a lit- 
tle Old Monongahela afterward, with the venerable bishop.” , 

“ No, Mr. Jerome. With my left eye closed, I can see only that 
much of the list which is to the right, and that begins with water, 


JANE JANSEN. 


303 


and ends with ” — 

“ Dry Champagne,” interjected Uncle John Beaver. 

“ Buttermilk,” added ’Squire Burkholder. 

“ Sherry,” added Captain Siebold. 

“ That is right in all. For since we are not allowed a choice in 
our eating,” broke in J udge Lippincott, “ but must take the courses 
as they come, we certainly should be permitted to determine our 
drinking for ourselves. Accordingly, I will take water first ” — 

“ May it please the honorable Court,” interjected Uncle John, “ I 
trust, it is not because the Supreme Court has accustomed your 
Honor to take water, that you do so now ? ” 

And with a round of laughter at the expense of the bench, the 
first course was served in accordance with the printed programme 
— preceded by a display of aquatic and semi-aquatic plants in three 
large vases on the table, including, cat-tail, rush, pond-lily, and the 
savory peppermint, diffusing its suggestive odor through the room. 

So, the second, third, fourth, and fifth courses w^re in accordance 
with the programme, preceded by appropriate displays of plants in 
the vases — the trout, by bunches of alder, birch, and hemlock, 
scented with mountain tea ; the frogs, by sedges, willow, and swamp 
oak, scented with spearmint; the wild turkey, by rhododendron, 
chestnut, and black-jack, scented with pennyroyal ; and the pig, 
lamb, and ox, by a variety of grasses and forage plants of the moun- 
tain, scented with summer savory, and other odorous herbs. 

At length, preparatory to serving the sixth course, the vases were 
set on the table filled with the leafy branches of spicewood and sas- 
safras ; and Dr. Mansfield attracted the attention of all to them, by 
remarking that these plants are the only true laurels to be found on 
the Alleghany Mountains and the only fitting accompaniment or 
crown for the sixth course which the forest afforded. 

Thereupon, the ponderous old physician, Dr. Postlewaite, rose to 
his feet, and with an impressive seriousness said, “ Ladies and gentle- 
men, with all deference to the distinguished architects and artists 
who have constructed this Apician Parthenon on the Acropolis of 
Appalachia, I suggest that the sixth course, as set forth in the bill of 
fare, be dispensed with ; for the reason that — whether intentionally 
or not, no matter — the bride is represented in it in facetious effigy, 
or what might be termed properly, a culinary caricature ; and in par- 
taking of it, accordingly, the guests will be devouring the bride by 
proxy, or committing cannibalism in effect. You know, of course, 
that a pigeon squab is the unfledged nestling of the bird of Aphro- 
dite, the ocean-born Goddess of Love ; and when that squab comes 
from the dove-cote of the Heart of Appalachia, with such trim- 


304 


JANE JANSEN. 


mings as oaten scone, noodles, bonny-clabber, or schmier-case, and 
white clover honey, it is very evident to me that our beloved ocean- 
born bride, who is not yet of full age, I believe, with her Grecian, 
Scotch, and Dutch involvings by nature, and a successful apiarist by 
occupation, and in clover especially at this time, might be symbol- 
ized — and has been symbolized, I verily believe, to my unspeakable 
horror! And I trust that you will all agree with me that our be- 
loved bride should not be served in that way by anybody at any 
time in any place without our decided protest and disapproval.” 

As the old physician sat down, Mother Gertrude, sitting opposite, 
alternately flushing and blanching, was the first to speak, and in her 
usual fiery tone when combating her ancient adversary, “ Oh, you 
horrid hypocrite ! You incomparable impostor ! If anybody has 
had a greater part than another in contriving this ingenious and 
elaborate effigy of the bride, to make her appear ridiculous under 
her own roof-tree and in the eyes of her nearest and dearest friends, 
it was you yourself who have exposed it! Oh, I know your hand- 
writing even in print; and you need not assume a look of outraged 
innocence — you are guilty ; and as you have been hobnobbing a great 
deal lately with Dr. Mansfield and Dr. Benham, I believe they have 
been your confederates : Birds of a feather will flock together.” 

And no sooner had Mother Gertrude ceased than Grace began. 
“ It is absolutely awful ! I never heard of anything so perfectly 
shocking in my life! And really and truly, Dr. Benham, if I had 
known you were capable of doing anything so heartless and inhu- 
man, I never would have looked at you ; and as it is now, I solemnly 
vow I will not speak to you for a whole month — No, I will not tie a 
knot in my handkerchief so that I shall not forget it! You horrid, 
horrid man ! ” 

At length, the woman-half of all about the board having deter- 
mined as a jury that the three physicians were guilty of the unstat- 
utory offence complained of variously, but sufficiently set forth in 
the bill of fare as if it were a true bill of indictment as well, appeal- 
ed to Judge Lippincott to sentence them to as many various punish- 
ments as there were jurors. 

The Judge, however, declined, saying, “Unhappily, I am related 
by marriage to a half-brother of a fourth cousin of one of the de- 
fendants, Dr. Mansfield, and I might be biased in his favor in de- 
spite of my convictions.” 

So, ’Squire Herbert declined— “ I never could do two things right 
at one time, and I will not attempt it now. I have sat down to eat 
my dinner; and that is as much as I can manage to do prop- 
erly now.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


305 


And Uncle John — “ I am a lawyer, and not a judge.” 

And Captain Siebold — “ I have never been naturalized, and can- 
not vote, much less sit on the bench.” 

And ’Squire Burkholder — “I positively decline. When Mother 
Gertrude and Dr. Postlewaite are engaged in an altercation, I stand 
by and hold her bonnet — nothing more.” 

And Mr. Melville, perhaps the wittiest man at the table, if not the 
most learned and profound— “ No; justice should be wholly blind, 
not half — let our happy groom decide. Then, besides my gallantry 
and charity are in the way : for doctors being, by universal consent, 
an intermediary form of humanity, neither wholly man nor wholly 
woman — in fact, being far from holy in every way they may be con- 
sidered — I think they should wear as a distinguishing dress divided 
skirts, and be entitled to the benefit of doubt with respect to their 
sex at all times.” 

By this time, all the men, including the defendant doctors, were 
laughing at the discomfited women, when I found an opportunity to 
say, “ Well, well, let the sentence be suspended until we have eaten 
our dinner. And since the guilty trio have borne in a great measure 
if not wholly the expense of our repast, I am very well satisfied that 
their fun should be at mine. Let the simulacrum be served ; that I 
not only may see myself as others see me in a culinary caricature, 
but also eat myself as others eat me, and by putting myself inside 
of myself, lose nothing of myself.” 

Thereupon, at a signal given by somebody in the facetious con- 
spiracy, one of the waiters brought in a large vessel literally covered 
so closely with opening rose-buds it was impossible to determine 
whether it was a large tin pan, a circular wicker basket, or a butter- 
bowl, provided with a lid ; and while all the guests were admiring 
the beautiful floral mound, the other servants placed before each, one 
of the dinner-plates decorated with dear old Fuji in the distance, and 
around it three smaller similarly decorated plates : one containing 
Dutch noodles, (cooked like Italian vermicelli,) another Scottish 
bonny-clabber, and the third an oaten cake and a semi-translucent 
cube of honeycomb, dripping with the dewy sweets of a firmament 
of clover blossoms in the fields surrounding my apiary — a natural 
ultimatum of sweetness to symbolize by an easy transition an ulti- 
matum of bliss, which my merry-making magicians wished me I 
know, and which I consciously felt. The first servant then lifted the 
rose-covered lid of the pie in the middle of the table, and lo ! be- 
neath a fine net of silk, surrounded by a wall of roses, appeared the 
prettiest of my young Jacobin pigeons— and one, curiously, having 

MM 


306 


JANE JANSEN. 


a few white feathers on its head approximately in the place of my 
peculiar patch of white hairs ! 

“Oh, Philemon, how I wish in my heart of hearts you could see 
the symbol of your happy wife our generous friends have set before 
me ! ” I exclaimed to my husband ; sitting in the midst of the see- 
ing like the impenetrable background of night from which the lu- 
minous stars are projected. Then, looking across the table, I caught 
the eye of Uncle John through his double glasses ; and, bowing my 
head, I said, “ I see the net, Uncle John, over the world of roses; 
and thanks to your teaching, I trust I will never forget its 
significance.” 

At this juncture, the ponderous old ringleader of the facetious 
conspirators rose, and silenced everybody by his commanding port. 
“ Ladies and gentlemen, I beg now to withdraw my objections,” he 
said, with his usual gravity. “ Since I have seen that the unfledged 
nestling of the bird of Aphrodite, the ocean-born Goddess of Love, 
has not been sacrificed or injured in any way, but, on the contrary, 
lovingly and tenderly restrained by an airy cobweb of silken fila- 
ments within a bower of the most enchanting beauty which the imps 
of invention and pleasantry have ever built, with the aid of Dame 
Nature’s shapeful shears and all her paints and perfumes, I am sat- 
isfied that the effigy is not a coarse caricature to distort and degrade, 
but an image of exquisite delicacy and refinement, of profound sig- 
nificance, and worthy in every way of our beloved bride ; and, be- 
fore resuming my seat, I beg leave to suggest that the perpetrators of 
the conceit, instead of being hung by the ladies present, should be 
smothered to death with kisses.” 

Following this, the most noteworthy of the episodes of the re- 
past, almost every item of the elaborate menu was discussed in a 
double sense, by the teeth and the tongue : especially the character- 
istic animals and vegetables of Appalachia, the snapping-turtle, sas- 
safras, and the like ; the relics of the remotest past retained in the 
marriage ceremonies and customs of to-day, as hinted at in the 
quince jam, bride cake, and rice cake; and the strange mutations in 
the character of the Indian god Shiva, in the course of his wander- 
ings through the ages, from the throbbing heart of the world and 
mankind in southern central Asia northwestwardly into the north 
of Africa and the south of Europe — into Osiris and other divine con- 
ceptions in Egypt, into Dionysos and other ideals of Providence in 
Greece, and into the lowest depths of degradation in the Divinity of 
Debauchery in Italy and later-day Christendom. 

At length, the repast over, while sipping our coffee, the venerable 
Bishop Barrington rose, with his champagne glass in his hand, and 


JANE JANSEN. 


307 


proposed a health to Mr. and Mrs. Philemon Holland, and the 
United States of America. 

Philemon responded to this in a very felicitous little speech, re- 
turning the compliment at its conclusion by proposing, “Bishop 
Barrington, and our Mother Country, Old England.” 

The bishop simply bowing to this, Robley rose and offered, “ A 
long pull and a strong pull to Mr. Jules Jerome, and the Seven Fair- 
haired Sisters of the Southern Seas, the Australasian Colonies.” 

This brought the old gentleman to his feet with the spring of a 
man of thirty ; and before he had spoken a half a dozen sentences, I 
realized what Philemon might become with a little practice in public 
speaking, with the same commanding person, graceful gestures, 
striking physiognomy, orotund voice, and easy flow of exact and 
harmonious English — in fine, a pleasing and effective orator. At 
length, turning from the Seven Sisters on the opposite side of the 
globe, the old gentleman bowed to Mrs. Wadsworth, the very per- 
sonification of perfect happiness in the guise of an old lady, sitting 
on the right of Philemon ; and after paying her a most affecting 
tribute of heartfelt gratitude from himself and his only daughter for 
the motherly love of the highest and purest character which she had 
shown, under the most distressing and horrible circumstances, to a 
strange young man, so hopelessly wrecked by the Johnstown Flood 
as to be known far and wide among the sufferers and their sympa- 
thizers of the great catastrophe as Poor Billy Blind-staggers, he pro- 
posed, with tears streaming down his face, and his voice becoming 
husky with emotion, “ Mrs. Wadsworth, and the natural reciprocity 
of the opposite sexes in relieving each other’s distress.” 

Robley responded to this, for the good old woman ; and a dozen or 
more compliments and congratulations in the form of healths and 
toasts followed one another in rapid succession at diverse angles 
across the table — among them, the following: — 

“Uncle John Beaver, the Sage of Somerset, and the solution of 
the paradox involved in the Supremacy of Woman in all the sym- 
bolic and allegoric representations of Justice, Government, and 
Statecraft, and her Suppression in fact — not being permitted to serve 
as a juror, or cast a vote.” “ That may be done in a few words,” re- 
sponded the polished philosopher. “ When a woman stands before, 
man stands behind, and guides, controls, and dominates, as only a 
man can, by reason of his differentiated development to an extreme. 
But when a man stands before, woman stands behind ; and the nat- 
ural dominating in her to the best of ends in a state of nature, will 
dominate him in the state of artificiality, in which all governments 
which have evolved from savagery exist, and subvert in time the 


JANE JANSEN. 


308 


most stable state conceivable in the midst of the unremitting muta- 
tions of the natural world. It is well, accordingly, that the figure- 
head of the Ship of State should be in the form of a woman, while 
a man is at the helm ; but — with all due respect, ladies — not the re- 
verse. In connection with which, however, I beg leave to propose, 
Captain Siebold, and all the Sons and Daughters of Poseidon from 
Jason to Jansen.” 

Bowing to this, Captain Siebold rose, and proposed, “ Mr. Henry 
Benham, and the Bark of Commerce in the upper third of the 
shield in the coat of arms of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” 

And taking a hint from this, the old importer at the conclusion of 
his remarks, proposed, “ The Good ’Squire of Johnstown, Rudolf 
Burkholder, and the Plow and Sheaves of Wheat in the middle and 
lower third of the same symbolic device.” 

To this, Lycurgus Smith, in behalf of the ’Squire, responded with 
his usual felicity, exactness, and perspicuity in speech-making — ri- 
valed at the board only by Bishop Barrington, Uncle John, and Dr. 
Postlewaite — and, in turn, proposed, “ The Triumvirate of Physi- 
cians, Postlewaite, Mansfield, and Benham, and the Haunts of 
Hygeia on the Heights of Appalachia.” 

To this Dr. Mansfield replied, and proposed, “ The Reverend Mar- 
tin Luther Melville, Hymen, and the Honey of Hymettos.” 

And in a very few sentences, in response to this, the reverend gen- 
tleman, who styled himself Polyphemos, satisfied us that the world 
of wit and wisdom had not been exhausted by his predecessors. In 
conclusion, he proposed, “ The Survivors of the Johnstown Flood,” 
and added, “ In connection with which, I beg leave to say, that since 
we have Deucalion and Pyrrha in our midst in a double form, I sin- 
cerely hope that, when they begin to pick up the stones of Appala- 
chia and cast them behind them, to become men and women as of 
old in the likeness of the throwers, one or other of the Pyrrhas will 
cast one so close to me that the instant it leaps into life I may clasp 
her to my bosom as my own, before a better looking bachelor, per- 
haps, with two eyes instead of one, may have a chance to carry 
her off!” 

To this, I heard sensitive Grace take a long breath and say in its 
exhalation a little louder than she intended, “ Dear me ! I never 
heard anything so perfectly shocking in all my life ! I really and 
truly am overwhelmed ! And Robley, please, do not nudge me so 
much with your elbow ! ” But disregarding her right to the floor, I 
rose and said, “ My dear friends, to bring this happy speech-making 
to a close, I beg you to rise, put your glasses on the table before you, 
and bow your heads in silence, in response to what I have the heart 


JANE JANSEN. 309 

but perhaps not the head to say as it should be said — To the memory 
of the Heroes and Heroines among the thousands of men, women, 
and children who perished in the unparalleled catastrophe of the 
Johnstown Flood ; and among these Heroes, and without disparage- 
ment to any, One, of a race of mankind perhaps the farthest re- 
moved from us, a gigantic savage from the heart of Africa, and yet 
the truest friend, the most faithful servant, and the most self-sacrific- 
ing savior ever woman had to thank for her life again and again ” — 
“ Congo ! ” said my husband, in a tremulous voice at my side ; my 
rising emotion having made me a mute. 


LXII. 

From the dining-room, we set out to go to the barn, where, to 
music furnished by Nathan Winters, with a violin, “ Big Bill ” 
Byerly, with a violoncello, Toby UpdegrafF, with a cornet, and 
Zambie, with a banjo, the young and old of the outer circle had been 
dancing and making merry in divers ways, while the young and old 
of the inner were dining and making speeches ; and as I walked, arm 
in arm with Philemon and Bishop Barrington, under the keystone of 
the arch about which the swarm of bees had settled in the morning, 
I saw another agreeable transformation which had been effected by 
the magic wand of the unknown enchanters — I saw my beautiful 
mares, Bessie and Fannie, resplendent in new gold-plated harness, 
attached to a new stylish carriage, luxuriously cushioned, and Yoko, 
in a new suit of clothes, sitting bolt-upright, with the affected rigid- 
ity of Mr. Nicholas Macorquordale, with the lines in his hand — 
“ Awaiting the orders of Mrs. Philemon Holland,” as he said, raising 
his hat and bowing to me with a smile. And albeit, it was only a 
hundred yards or so to the barn, I was forced, by general acclama- 
tion and a particular inclination, to step into the carriage with the 
venerable bishop and my husband, and try the springs and cushions 
in a few minutes’ trot along the turnpike past the barn and back : the 
change of air and the exercise exhilarating all of us. 

As I alighted at the open door of the barn, Winters called out, 
“ Promenade all ! ” and the first persons to catch my eye on the floor 
were Grace and her “ funny old miller,” Harvey Bowser, Robley and 
Mother Gertrude, the good old ’Squire and my Aunt Melissa, and 
the formal and precise Judge Lippincott with the roseate and glisten- 
ing Mrs. Wadsworth, swinging around with an utter disregard to 
time, step, grace, and garment, but as merry withal as the best of 


310 


JANE JANSEN. 


the dancers on the floor : and weaving in and out among the ladies 
and gentlemen, the ape-like Chippie, the very personification of gro- 
tesque mirth and humor ; appearing, in my imagination, now, as a 
Satyros among the merry-making gods and goddesses of the infancy 
of Grecian fancy ; now, as a fantastic clown at a court-ball during the 
Middle Ages ; now, as an organ-grinder’s capped and coated monkey 
among a throng of dancing children in the street; now, as a zero 
point in the scale of adult humanity ; and finally, as a vibrating leaf 
on a depending twig and branch of one of the five great bending 
arms of the Mundane Tree of Mankind, almost touching with its tip 
the primeval mud in which the tree is rooted. 

The next quadrille, I danced as a matter of form with Father 
Jerome in the stead of my husband; and at its conclusion, I slipped 
to the house with Robley to attend to a little matter of business 
which I had entrusted to him, namely, the purchase of the note 
which Mr. Melville had given the storekeeper when he borrowed the 
money from him to buy his new suit of clothes for the occasion of 
my marriage. This secured, and finding it properly receipted, I en- 
closed it with two ten-dollar bills in an envelope addressed to Mr. 
Melville with a special request that he would not open it until the 
thirtieth day of June — the day before his note would fall due. This 
done, I gave the packet to Robley to hand in private to the good 
man who had been so zealous and obliging in my behalf during the 
day, receiving the sting of bees, the laughter of ridicule, and the 
thrust of jest and jibe, from young and old, with the happiest com- 
plaisance imaginable. 

Then, in the evening, while some were dancing, and others were 
eating an informal supper under the spreading elm, Grace and 
Father Jerome, exchanging winks, requested me to take them in my 
carriage to Rosenborg and back. I complied, of course ; for I sus- 
pected my absence was necessary for the mysterious enchanters to 
work their wonders which pleased me so much. 

On returning, however, I found Henry and Sarah Milburn trem- 
ulously awaiting me between hope and fear, with a letter from Mr. 
Clifford, the attorney, to see the child in my keeping and reclaim 
him if they believed him to be their son ; and in my interest in the 
child and sympathy with the painfully impatient father and mother, 
I forgot myself and my own affairs absolutely. 

The babe was asleep, when the parents beheld him in the light of 
a lamp in Cora’s cabin ; and failing to see any resemblance between 
the child nineteen months old before them and their remembered in- 
fant of six, they looked up from the cradle into each other’s eyes, 
and burst into tears. In the end, however, after waking the child, 


JANE JANSEN. 


311 


and stripping him from head to foot, and examining the peculiar de- 
flection of the tip of his backbone, and staring into his great won- 
dering eyes, and smiling responsively to the mirthful movements of 
his dimpled cheeks and ruby lips, the mother clasped the babe to 
her bosom, exclaiming, “ He is mine ! he is mine ! I feel it in every 
drop of my blood ! Here, Henry, take your son, and let me go, that 
I may throw myself at the feet of the woman who took him first 
from the waters of the flood, and at the feet of the man who 
breathed the breath of life into his senseless corpse and raised him 
from the dead, and then at the grave of the poor woman who ran 
into the country with him, to feed and nourish him till she sank 
into the tomb ! ” And of all the speeches I heard on that eventful 
day of my marriage, the outpouring of this impassioned mother’s 
gratitude was the most thrilling. 

At length, after the emotional storm of the poor woman had sub- 
sided, she begged me to describe to her the unknown woman who 
had been instrumental in saving her child. I did so, to the minut- 
est detail of her person and dress ; but my words recalled no famil- 
iar form to her mind. The instant I depicted the woman’s face, 
however, she threw up her hands in an expression of horror at her- 
self, as if conscience-stricken, exclaiming, “ My stepmother! I hum- 
bly kiss the rod!” And before going away with the child, in the 
night, on account of the crowded condition of ever\' habitable build- 
ing on the farm with my guests, they promised to return at an early 
day and set up a tombstone at the grave of the woman’s stepmother, 
Amanda Markle, as they named her, and reimburse me for all the 
expenses which I had been put to in caring for Mrs, Markle and the 
child — a debt which I canceled at once. 

And as the rattle of their buggy died away in the direction of 
Laughlinstown, I went from the cabin of my Korean dependents to 
the great stone inn, and reported to my friends the last chapter in 
the history of the Dobson claim to the Heart of Appalachia : the 
title, on the death of the infant girl, with her father and mother in 
the flood, having passed to her collateral heirs ; and these being the 
children of John Carpenter, the younger, who conveyed the tract for 
a valuable consideration to my grandfather, Alexander Graham, the 
title vested absolutely in his heirs at law, my aunt and myself. 

At half past eleven, I retired to the large room which, with weeks 
of care and contriving, I had prepared for the living-room of Phile- 
mon and myself ; and on opening the door, I found it so altered by 
the busy enchanters in my absence at Rosenborg and in Cora’s cabin 
that I did not recognize a single thing in it but the paper on the 
walls and the woodwork— I found, in fact, the bed, bedding, bureau, 


JANE JANSEN. 


312 

chairs, carpet, curtains — all new and beautiful and costly ; and on a 
table, a grand display of cut-glass, silverware, books, and bric-a-brac, 
without the slightest clue anywhere to enable me to identify the 
mysterious magicians. 

At length, the new clock on the mantel struck twelve with the pe- 
culiar muffled tone of the clock in my chamber at Idavoll, which, 
recalling the deep-toned bells which had thrilled me in infancy in 
Japan, carried me back to my childhood of enchantment under the 
ever-watchful and tender eyes of my sad, sweet mother on earth and 
dear old Fuji in heaven ; whereupon, extinguishing the new and 
beautiful lamp in the room, that the sight of nothing in the present 
might destrojr the illusion of the past, I sat down on a chair by an 
open window; and looking vacantly into the great shadow of night 
which concealed the finite world of fact beneath me and revealed 
the infinite world of fancy above me, I seemed to be dissevered from 
my physical self and exist apart from it, as simply sentient feeling 
and thought, in infinite time and space. 

And while I sat in this dreamy abstraction, I heard a keynote 
struck on a banjo beneath my window, and immediately afterward, 
the melodious voice of Zambie, swelling in volume from a scarcely 
audible hum to an all-pervading sound of indescribable sweetness, as 
he began to sing the savage lullaby with which a thousand times his 
heroic father, my tender-hearted savior from fire and flood, had 
soothed me to sleep and happy dreams in his arms — an unintelli- 
gible jargon of savage words, a wild and weird interblending of sav- 
age sounds — an echo from the heart of humanity in the shadows of 
night in the very heart of Africa, the great Babyland among the 
Continental areas of the globe ! But withal, to me, the sweetest 
epithalamium any of the infinite voices of Nature could give ex- 
pression to in song, and conduct me in a tremor of bliss to the side 
of the sightless father of my children in the future. 


LXIII. 

The morning after my marriage, ( the story of my heritage not be- 
ing concluded wholly by my becoming the wife of Philemon Hol- 
land, ) Yoko’s sister, Lily, was not to be found in her accustomed 
place at daybreak ; and everybody was aroused — the inner circle of 
guests in the big stone house from basement to garret, and the outer 
on the haymows of the barn. Soon after, among the latter, it was 
discovered that the elaborate Indian costume of To-ga-to-maugh, on 


JANE JANSEN. 


313 


the mow over the harn floor, contained a dummy of straw ; and that 
Injin Jim, as a rather uncertain belonging of ’Squire Burkholder, 
and his every-day apparel, were gone ; and putting this and that to- 
gether, coupled with their association the day before, the conclusion 
of everybody at once was, that, as one marriage makes many, the 
young man and woman had eloped to be married ; but whether after 
the manner and customs of the Cornplanters to whom To-ga-to- 
maugh was believed to belong, or the more civilized fashion of the 
black-haired children of Han, of the Mysterious Peninsula of North- 
eastern Asia, was left undetermined, but with the chances greatly 
in favor of the former. 

While we were eating breakfast, however, Mr. Melville came to the 
inn with the runaways in his charge and delivered them to their sev- 
eral guardians, until a license for their marriage could be procured. 
They had gone to the parsonage with the expectation of being mar- 
ried at the earliest opportunity by Mr. Melville, and encountered an 
unlooked-for insurmountable obstacle in the want of an official per- 
mit ; and on the minister’s assurance that he would unite them as 
soon as a license could be procured, and the consent of all interested 
obtained through his intercession, they hung their heads in silent 
acquiescence and returned with him to the inn — abashed by the dis- 
covery of their secret passion for each other, but emboldened by the 
consciousness that they were sincere in their love and honorable in 
their intentions, and as well by the encouragement given them by 
the good minister. 

In due time, accordingly’, there was another wedding in the Heart 
of Appalachia, and a cabin erected and furnished by ’Squire Burk- 
holder near the cabin of the Koreans, and the Asiatic bride and the 
American groom installed in a bewilderment of bliss, which, cur- 
iously, found but the faintest expression in their apathetic faces and 
undemonstrative manners ; while Bishop Barrington and Father 
Jerome and Robley and Philemon were discussing from their several 
points of view the union of the great divisions of mankind which 
To-ga-to-maugh and Lily represented, namely, the American Red- 
skin and the Asiatic Yellowskin : Philemon, as the scientific anthro- 
pologist of the quartette, affirming that the so-called Indians of 
America, from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn were in various de- 
grees the resultant of the crossing and intercrossing for ages of the 
great Polynesian and Mongolian divisions of the human race which 
have peopled it from the west — coming at various times, and land* 
ing at different points on the coast : that their union, being only one 
degree apart as races, is productive of a vigorous hybrid, which, in a 

NN 


314 


JANE JANSEN. 


suitable environment, as the islands of Japan, may attain a very 
high if not the highest standard of humanity. 


LXIV. 

Soon after our marriage, Philemon and I began a systematic 
search after evidence of the loss of “ The Whale-Hawk ” within the 
whaling-grounds specified in the policy of insurance, and by any of 
the accidents enumerated, or usually incidental, to the whaling ser- 
vice. With the exception of the names of several Kanakas, or na- 
tives of the Hawaiian Islands, shipped at Hilo, we obtained a com- 
plete list of the crew from my Aunt Melissa, with a number of facts 
with respect to several of them which would enable us to trace their 
families and friends, and get any information they might possess of 
the missing vessel. With this list, we made repeated visits to New 
Bedford, Nantucket, and other whaling ports of New England, and 
found the families of several of the crew, and a great number of 
men who knew my father personally and remembered the sailing of 
the new vessel, with the skipper’s bride and her sister aboard, to 
combine a wedding tour with a whaling cruise ; but we failed to get 
from anybody a single item of information with respect to the vessel 
after her departure from Yokohama, under the command of the first 
mate, Jasper Medbury. Afterward, we supplemented this search in 
person, by a further and more extensive by letter, but with no better 
success. The ship sailed from the harbor of Yokohama, and there 
an end. 

At length, we discontinued our fruitless search ; and during the 
following three years — in which, Philemon and I spent several 
months of the latter part of each winter and early spring in Eng- 
land, making excursions betimes to Paris, the Hague, Rome, Athens, 
and Madrid, and in which two children were born to us in the 
Heart of Appalachia, Jerome Jansen in the summer of 1891, with 
the black eyes and hair of his mother, but without the white blazon 
which she had inherited from her mother, and Melissa Graham, in 
the summer of 1892, with the big blue eyes and yellow hair which 
characterized her father in youth, before tbe former grew grey and 
sightless, and the latter assumed a brownish hue — and thought little 
about the matter : all our means of prosecuting the search any far- 
ther being exhausted, and the snug little fortune involved remaining 
seemingly forever in the impenetrable locker of Davy Jones at the 
bottom of the sea. 


JANE JANSEN. 


315 


However, in the summer of 1893, we went to Chicago to spend 
several months in inspecting through my eyes the countless exhibits 
of the various nations of the earth at the Columbian Exposition, and 
the architectural wonders of the City (>f Enchantment in which they 
were housed. We were accompanied by Mrs. Wadsworth and my 
Aunt Melissa, as a supplemental mother to each of the children, and 
To-ga-to-maugh and Lily- — or, Mr. and Mrs. James Burkholder, as 
they were known beyond the family circle of the Heart of Appala- 
chia — as general servants; the former being invaluable to Philemon 
as a guide and protector in the streets of a city, and the latter indis- 
pensable in the care of the children, while their primary and secon- 
dary mothers were engaged in visiting, sight-seeing, shopping, and 
entertaining friends. And, happily, as the sequel will show, we se- 
cured convenient lodgings on the first floor of the Hotel Ozark, on 
the corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue, and but a hun- 
dred yards or so from a station of the Elevated Railway ; and we made 
our first and many subsequent visits to the fair grounds without any 
incident worthy of note in connection with this story. 

Philemon and I, and the children, occupied the large rooms desig- 
nated A 13 and 14, and Mrs. Wadsworth and my Aunt Melissa 15, 
while To-ga-to-maugh and Lily were domiciled in a smaller a little 
distance away through a labyrinth of narrow passages, A 4 ; and 
Philemon venturing one day, the memorable 15th day of August, 
1893, to find his way by feeling from 13 to 4, lost his way ; and, hav- 
ing come to the stairway by the side of the elevator which he recog- 
nized, he began the descent to the office on the floor below. Cau- 
tiously proceeding step by step, he reached the last, when, by some 
mischance, he slipped, lost his balance, and fell to the marble floor. 
An instant afterward, before anybody could come to his assistance, 
he was on his feet, trembling noticeably and turning his shoulders 
and neck as if to determine the extent to which the upper part of 
his body had been wrenched. In reply to the servants of the hotel 
who gathered around him, however, he said he was not hurt, with 
the exception of barely feeling painfully the twisting to which his 
neck and shoulders had been subjected, and begged that none of 
them would report the trivial accident to his wife, to alarm her 
unnecessarily. 

A few minutes afterward, I descended to the office to join him and 
To-ga-to-maugh and go to the fair, and detected a certain agitation in 
his face and discomposure in his dress the instant I beheld him sit- 
ting in an arm-chair in the parlor ; and to my hurried enquiries, 
with increasing anxiety unconsciously expressed in the changing 
tone of my voice, he told me what had happened — remarking in 


316 


JANE JANSEN. 


conclusion, “ I am agitated a little perhaps, but 1 am not hurt, and 
am ready to go to the fair. Send for To-ga-to-maugh, and let us be 
off while we have a chance to obtain seats in the cars, which later in 
the day usually are filled to overflowing long before they reach this 
point from the central part of the city.” 

I accepted his statement with a reservation ; and soon after our 
arrival in the grounds, I was satisfied, from a persistent flush in his 
face and a tremulous uncertainty in his movements, that he had 
been affected by the fall more seriously than he imagined, or con- 
fessed ; and distressing visions of the awful fate of my father, as the 
result of his fall, began to rise before me and blind me to everything 
in the world save the all-involving significance of the visible figure 
of my afflicted husband at my side. 

Procuring a rolling-chair, I prevailed on him by a little pardon- 
able wile, to sit in it and be wheeled to the lake-side of the grounds, 
where a refreshing breeze was coming in over the vast expanse of 
Lake Michigan, and where I could get for him a cup of his favorite 
Cingalese tea, and test for myself the extent of his injuries by the 
reaction effected in him by the most favorable circumstances. 

And here we had our luncheon in due time and remained until 
three o’clock in the afternoon, when we went leisurely to the south- 
western corner of the Court of Honor, where, in the latter part of the 
afternoon, when the effects of sunshine and shadow are the most 
effective from an artistic point of view, I usually made it a point to 
go to behold as a whole with ineffable rapture, and to study in detail 
with infinite delight, the most magnificent and beautiful expression 
of the genius of Man in an objective structural form the world has 
ever seen. 

Having arrived at my favorite point of view, To-ga-to-maugh took 
a seat a little distance from us, and I took his place at the back of 
the rolling-chair in which Philemon sat in an unusual silence and 
indifference, with respect to his unseen situation and surroundings 
and my actions and thoughts, which I attributed to his accident in 
the morning. Presently, while I was looking over his hat and 
dreamily wandering in mind across the sheen of the Grand Basin, 
past the glittering statue of the Republic, and through the central 
arch of the superb Eastern Peristyle, and losing myself along the 
indistinct line where the curve of Lake Michigan interblended with 
the overarching azure of infinity, I was recalled suddenly and tumul- 
tuously, and with a perceptible shudder coursing through my body, 
by Philemon addressing me in a tone of independence and self- 
assertion I had not heard him utter since our last happy meeting 
and parting before the destruction of Johnstown. 


JANE JANSEN. 


317 


u Jane, I have something of the greatest importance to tell you — 
are you strong enough to hear it unmoved in this public place ? ” 
Not unmoved, my dear husband ; for I am disturbed already bv 
the altered tone of your voice. But let it be the worst that may, 
I will hear it as becomes your wife, and the mother of your child- 
ren, here or elsewhere, without losing control of myself, I believe, 
and make the best of it. Go on ; I am prepared.” 

“ But, my dear wife, it is the best of news and not the worst ; and 
w T hile I know your powers of sustaining the shocks of misfortune 
and enduring the pains and pangs of prolonged misery, I do not 
know your powers of resistance under the hammer of good fortune 
which is said to be harder to bear than that of bad.” 

Emboldened and braced by this remark to receive complacently 
any communication he might make, and beginning to regard the 
mysterious matter in a facetious or amusing light, I replied, “ I am 
holding fast to the back of your chair, and will neither fall to the 
ground for bad news nor soar into the sky for good; so, I pray 
you, go on.” 

But my husband hung his head and made no reply. 

“ I presume,” I continued, “ you have devised a new scheme of 
search after the lost £ Whale-Hawk,’ involving possibly an examina- 
tion for wreckage of the shore-lines of Northeastern Asia and North- 
western America and the intervening Aleutian Islands ? ” 

“ No, my dear wife ; my secret is vastly more important than 
any scheme ” 

“ Then,” interrupting him, “ you have found some trace of the 
missing vessel — you have been conversing betimes with strangers 
from all parts of the world here in Chicago now, and you have 
learned from one of them the good news that the ship went down in 
one of the seas prescribed in the policy of insurance, north 
of Yokohama? ” 

“ No, Jane ; my secret is vastly more important to us than the re- 
covery of the full value of ‘ The Whale- Hawk,’ and any store of oil 
she might have had in her hold at the time of her disappearance, 
with the highest interest under the limit of usury to date. Call To- 
ga-to-maugh to your side. He may be a necessary support to you 
when you are unconscious of needing any. Call him, Jane. I never 
spoke to you in greater seriousness.” 

In despite of his words and the tone of voice in which they were 
uttered, I fancied I detected a certain mockery in both ; and having 
called To-ga-to-maugh to my side, I bade him, with smiles circling 
my face, to be prepared to catch me in the event of my sinking or 
soaring on hearing what my husband was about to tell me. “We 


318 JANE JANSEN. 

are ready, now,” I added, addressing my husband. 

“ Stand firm, then, my dear wife. I can see ! . . . . For the 
past hour or so, my eyes, even with the lids closed and covered by 
the veil which I wear as the badge of my blindness, have been af- 
fected by the light, and I believe I can see to a certain extent at 

least The wrench to which my backbone, from my head 

to my hips, was subjected this morning, in my efforts to save my- 
self from the effects of a fall, has removed somehow the cause of my 
blindness — perhaps, by acting as a counter irritant and withdrawing 
the effused serum in the complexity of my brain, which, according 
to the surmises of Robley and other physicians, has been pressing 
against the inner ganglia of vision and destroying them functionally 
for the time being without impairing them organically. At any 
rate, account for it as anatomists, physiologists, or pathologists may, 
I believe I have recovered, to some extent at least, if not wholly, my 
powers of vision, and that, if the bandage were removed from my 
eyes, I could distinguish objects.” 

I heard every word my husband said — that is, I believe I did ; 
for what I heard had a natural sequence from a beginning to an 
end ; but it is possible that I was unconscious for several instants 
during its deliverance, as I certainly was afterward in the arms of 
To-ga-to-maugh. 

Without bewilderment on recovery, however, I said, “ Then, my 
dear husband, let your happy wife beyond the powers of expression, 
remove the veil ; that, in the first look of your recovered vision, you 
may receive a full compensation for many years of blindness.” 
Then,* removing the bandage from behind, I continued, “ Behold, 
from this vantage point, in the perfection of light and shadow at this 
moment, an ultimatum of the art of Man, to which, before the open- 
ing of this world’s fair, mankind has been as blind as you until this 
instant. This, within the compass of vision from this point, is the 
Court of Honor: at your side on your left, at this the western end 
of the Grand Basin, the Columbian Fountain designed by Frederick 
MacMonnies ; farther on your left, the south front of the Electricity 
Building; and beyond the mouth of the North Canal, the southern 
fagade of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building ; on our right, 
the north fronts of Machinery Hall and the Agricultural Building, 
separated by the South Lagoon ; in front of us, in the Grand Basin 
facing the Administration Building behind us, the colossal statue of 
the Republic, designed by French ; back of it the Peristyle, surmoun- 
ted by the Quadriga, representing the Triumph of Columbus ; and 
beyond, the Mediterranean of America, Lake Michigan, interblend- 
ing with an Italian sky not included among the Italian exhibits.” 


JANE JANSEN. 


319 


I stood behind the chair of my husband while I spoke, in order 
that he might have an unobstructed view ; and after I had ceased to 
speak, with increasing impatience for several minutes — my heart 
beating seemingly audibly to To-ga-to-maugh at my side — I awaited 
an expected outburst of admiration in the felicitous, comprehensive, 
and singularly appropriate phraseology in which my husband 
usually expressed himself when excited by interest or emotion. 

At length, he said, calmly, “ My dear wife, since you have removed 
the bandage from my eyes, I have kept my eyelids closed, and I 
have seen nothing. In doing so, I have defeated a hope of }mur 
heart, and disappointed you grievously as an enthusiastic artist — 
seeing beauty and grandeur with the preeminent powers of vision 
with which your race is gifted especially ; and I have deprived my- 
self undoubtedly of the rarest of visual delights. In doing so, also, 
I have put myself in opposition to you whom I love with the en- 
tirety of my being, and for any hurt I have done you incidentally, I 
humbly crave your pardon ; but in the first moments of my freedom 
from the self-extinguishing subjection of absolute blindness, I could 
not resist the temptation of asserting, at the first opportunity, my 
independence as an untrammeled unit of mankind. I did not look 
when and as you directed me to ; and further, I will not, until after 
I have seen another view which will gratify me infinitely more than 
this unrivaled Court of Honor and all the other marvelous views of 
the City of Enchantment combined.” 

“ Your will, my dear husband, is my pleasure always, and even 
now, in an unfathomable disappointment which I confess, an inex- 
pressible delight.” 

“ Replace then, happy woman, the bandage over my eyes ; and 
let us return at once to our hotel, that, in the privacy and graduated 
light of our chamber, I may surfeit my recovered sense of sight by 
looking into the happy faces of my beloved wife and children, and, 
next to the mother that bore me and the wife of my bosom, that 
dearest of women, the self-sacrificing foster-mother of Poor Billy 
Blind-staggers ! My blindness may return to me on the exposure of 
my eyes to the light ; and I will not jeopard the only look I may 
have with any sight less dear to me than those who for years have 
been housed unseen in my heart.” 

“ My dear husband, in doing so and sajdng so, you have proved 
your right to command me, and I cheerfully obey.” 

I replaced the bandage ; and as I bent over him, I sank into his 
bosom and kissed his lips and cheeks rapturously ; saying, as I rose, 
“ The husband and father who will shut his eyes to the glory of the 
globe and seek to find his happiness in the faces of his wife and 


320 


JANE JANSEN. 


children, and a woman who has been self-sacrificing to relieve him 
in distress, will ever have a wife to bend to him in mind and body 
and find her greatest happiness in doing so, children to love him and 
emulate his virtues, and good and kind women in any and every 
part of the habitable globe, to the full extent of their resources, to 
minister to him in accordance with his necessities. Come, To-ga-to- 
maugh. We will go now to the stand where we got this chair, and 
thence to the platform of the Elevated Railway to return to the 
Hotel Ozark.” 


LXV. 

For several days after the recovery of his sight, Philemon was in 
greater danger of meeting accidents than before; for in the four long 
years of his absolute blindness, he had lost to some extent the rec- 
ognition of the relative distances of objects before him, and was con- 
stantly reaching for things beyond his grasp and running against 
persons and things which seemed to him to be farther away than a 
stride; and in the resilience of his whole being from the slavery and 
dependence of his affliction, he was willful and venturesome in going 
in and out of the hotel alone, and correspondingly unmanageable. 
Happily, however, by combining all the available resources of Mrs. 
Wadsworth, my Aunt Melissa, To-ga-to-maugh, Lily, and myself, 
against his willfulness and waywardness, (except in the matter of 
smoking, which, curiously, he resumed at once, after a discontinu- 
ance of the habit for over four years, through his fear of fire, 
mainly,) we kept him in check in a great measure and under con- 
stant surveillance ; and he ran the gauntlet of his first week’s glori- 
ous independence with no more serious injury than a pair of bruised 
shins, a scorched finger, and an abraded nose. 

From day to day, moreover, we gained assurance that the elated 
man might use his eyes from dawn to dusk without any determin- 
able danger ; and during the latter part of August and the first two 
weeks of September, I enjoyed the extreme happiness of beholding 
the infinite wonders and beauties of the World’s Fair with my hus- 
band’s eyes as well as my own. 

At this time, our family circle at the Hotel Ozark was enlarged 
considerably by the addition of Robley and Grace, and their two 
children about the ages of mine, Archibald Gregory and Jane Jan- 
sen, and an attending maid ; ’Squire Burkholder and Mother Ger- 
trude ; Lycurgus Smith and his eldest daughter, Irene— a beautiful 


JANE JANSEN. 


321 


girl of fifteen ; and Mr. and Mrs. Milburn, and the child of destiny, 
who had been christened anew hv his parents, Mark, in the expres- 
sion ot their gratitude to the mother’s stepmother, Amanda Markle, 
and as a self-inflicted scourge for their former avoidance of the poor 
woman. And almost daily we went to the fair in a body, but soon 
divided there into several groups — to return betimes to the hotel as 
stragglers, with the most diverse experiences to relate to one another 
on assembling in the parlor before retiring for the night. 

At length came the time for packing our thousand and one pur- 
chases of the most irreconcilable constituents — Austrian glassware, 
Japanese bronzes and carvings in wood, ivory, and stone, Irish carv- 
ings in bogwood, Indian brassware and carvings in ivory, wood, and 
stone, Javanese bats and masks, Holland plaques and tiles, South 
Sea shells, Damascus tiles and cimetars, Italian paintings, silver fila- 
gree work, mosaics, and carvings in wood, shell, lava, and marble, 
Turkestan rugs, Belgian and Bulgarian laces, French jewelry, Rus- 
sian malachite, and typic specimens of pottery from half the coun- 
tries of the globe; and while my Aunt Melissa and myself were 
wrapping and adjusting the various articles in suitable boxes in our 
rooms, and Mrs. Wadsworth and Grace’s maid were keeping watch 
and ward over the two pairs of little children and Master Mark- 
more irrepressible in his fifth year than a dozen children in their sec- 
ond, — Philemon, To-ga-to-maugh, and Lily, (who usually went to- 
gether for their mutual protection,) from morning till night, were 
reveling in the myriad of amusements and entertaining side-shows 
of the Midway Plaisance ; and every evening, on their return, added 
to our perplexing store of souvenirs, curiosities, and specimens, their 
several purchases from the bazaars of Cairo and Constantinople, the 
wigwams of the American aborigines, the villages of the Irish, the 
Javanese, the Samoans, and the Dahomeyans, the encampment of 
the Bedouin of the Desert, the huts and kennels of the Esquimaux, 
and the farm of the Ostriches. 

Finally, the untrammeled trio went to the Korean Department in 
the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, and purchased a 
screen, which, in eight pictures, represented a royal hunt in the 
Mysterious Peninsula— Philemon thinking it would be not only in- 
teresting to my aunt and myself, by reason of our early association 
with the Forbidden Land and its singularly exclusive people at the 
time, but a source of endless pleasure to Yalu and Cora afar in the 
Heart of Appalachia, with half the girth of the globe approximately 
between them and their native land — the scenes, the costumes, and 
the characteristic animals and plants of the peculiar country being 

00 


322 


JANE JANSEN. 


delineated by the native artist with such skill and fidelity as to sat- 
isfy the exacting demands of children for details. 

Whatsoever the purpose, however, the Korean salesman, during 
the negotiations for the exchange of the screen, kept his eye on Lily 
and finally addressed her in her mother tongue ; hut, cowering be- 
hind her husband, she made no response. After the purchase had 
been made, however, the bashful woman was induced to reply to the 
Korean ; and in a little while they were engaged in a rapid exchange 
of remarks of the most surprising and agreeable character to each 
other, and seemingly oblivious to all the world besides — so much so 
that Philemon and To-ga-to-maugh went into the neighboring Siam- 
ese Department and sat down to await the termination of the spir- 
ited discourse in a language absolutely unknown to both. 

At length, Lily called them to her side, and in a glow of excite- 
ment informed them that the Korean salesman was an uncle of her 
mother — that he was one of the men who had accompanied the mag- 
istrate when he boarded “ The Whale-Hawk ” in the harbor of Gen- 
san — that he had the bottle ( but not the contents ) which my 
mother, and the magazines which my aunt, had given him still 
among his treasures at home — and that two of his special reasons 
for attending the Columbian Exposition were a desire to learn if pos- 
sible the fate of his kinswoman, and an inappeasable longing to see 
the world of wonders beyond the boundaries of Chosen which the 
visit of the undreamed-of people in the marvelous whaling vessel 
had implanted in his being and that of thousands of his neighbors 
and friends besides. 

Then, in token of the joy the Korean felt individually and the 
gladness his report of the welfare of Yalu and Cora in America 
would infuse among their relatives and friends in their native coun- 
try, he loaded Lily with presents for her father and mother, her sis- 
ter Minnie, and her brothers Yoko and Cheng, and herself, and sent, 
by Philemon, a large earthenware bottle filled with the finest of Ko- 
rean wine to my aunt, a pair of shoes to my little boy Jerome Jan- 
sen, a doll to my little girl Melissa Graham, and an ornament for the 
hair made of tortoise shell to myself. 

In return, Philemon presented the generous man with his watch 
and chain and cigar-case, and invited him, and, through him, in the 
name of Lily, my aunt, and myself, all the Koreans to the number 
of seven in the city, to a banquet in the evening three days after- 
ward at the Hotel Ozark. 

Then, having parted with their new-found friend, the trio, with 
their bundles and packages, made their way to the Elevated Railway 
and squeezed themselves into a crowded car— in the jam, the neck 


JANE JANSEN. 


323 


of the earthenware wine-bottle in the hands of Philemon running 
into the screen in To-ga-to-maugh’s hands, but apparently doing no 
more damage than punching a small hole in an upper corner of one 
of the pictures. 

And when, at length — the several stories of the trio told, and their 
purchases and presents displayed in the largest of my rooms in the 
hotel — Grace, w T ho still had a lingering affection for her deary Nappy 
Bony Benny, went to his parents’ room on the floor above and 
brought down the boy to look at the pictures on the screen ; and the 
irrepressible Mark, having espied the little hole in the corner, insis- 
ted on putting his finger in it and enlarging it in order to see for 
himself and be satisfied what if anything was in the space between 
the two pictures on each frame, or to ascertain how r the screen had 
been made, or, rather, in the expression of the spirit of antagonism 
and vandalism which animates especially the man-half of humanity 
in the savagery of nature and the childhood of civilized life. 

Finally, after repeated assaults by the willful boy, without any 
appreciable enlargement of the hole, he tore the paper audibly and 
alarmingly to all ; and at once Grace took him up in her arms and 
carried him out of the room, kicking and screaming in a vigorous 
but vain remonstrance to any kind of restraint or control. 

Thereupon, my Aunt Melissa stepped to the screen to ascertain 
the extent of the damage done by the boy ; and having taken 
in her hand the falling flap of paper from the corner to raise it and 
adjust it as it had been, she suddenly stopped, gazed for a minute as 
if spellbound, blanched, and staggered backward into my arms. 

Curiously, not one of us around my aunt imagined that the cause 
of her collapse lay in what she had seen on the back of the picture, 
and attributed her syncope to her sudden rising from a sitting pos- 
ture on the floor; and we devoted ourselves to her relief without a 
thought of looking further at the broken screen. 

A few minutes later, having risen from the sofa on which we had 
laid her and taken a sip of water, my aunt said, feebly, “ Pardon my 
weakness, Jane, Philemon — all of you ; but,” flushing noticeably and 
lowering her eyes, “ I have seen on the back of the detached part of 
the Korean picture before you, the handwriting of Jasper Medbury ; 
and from the several words which I have read, I believe the water- 
stained paper, pasted on the back of the Korean paper to give it 
body, has been torn from the log-book of £ The Whale-Hawk ; ’ and 
that all the necessary proof of the loss of the ill-fated vessel will be 
found in the screen. The log-book has drifted with the wreckage 
of the ship to the shores of Korea, the water-soaked leaves torn 
out and dried, and afterward utilized and preserved, as I have found 


324 


JANE JANSEN. 


a significant fragment at least ! ” 

As ray aunt inferred, the single picture revealed on examination 
the sufficing data to effect a recovery of the insurance money ; for 
one of the pasted sheets contained the last entry made by the first 
mate ; and this recited the time, place, and circumstances of the acci- 
dent to “ The Whale-Hawk,’* which, in a short time, doubtless, would 
cause the good ship to sink and oblige the crew to take to the boats 
in a stormy sea. 

The accident occurred at two o’clock in the morning of the 25th of 
September, 1870, in latitude 42°, north, and longitude 146°, west of 
Washington — that is, in the sea of Korea or Japan, fifty or sixty 
miles west of the little island of Okushiri, off the southwestern coast 
of the large Japanese island of Yeso : a furious gale blowing at the 
time from the northeast, or toward the great bight in the eastern 
shore of Korea, in which the harbor of Gensan is situated. At this 
time and place, the ship, with fourteen hundred and sixty-two bar- 
rels of oil in her hold, being in a great measure, presumably, at the 
mercy of the winds and waves of an equinoctial storm, came into 
collision with a derelict Korean junk of the largest size, laden with 
logs, receiving such a rent in her sheathing amidships as to be irrep- 
arable during the tempest and cause her to founder in a few hours 
at the farthest — leaving the crew in the boats to be overwhelmed 
long before they could reach a harbor of safety before the gale. 

Whatsoever the presumptions, however, the brief entries in the 
log made by the mate through the force of habit in the discharge of 
his duty — possibly when he realized the vessel was doomed — were 
sufficient for the purposes required, in the opinion of Robley, ’Squire 
Burkholder, and Mr. Smith, who were present, as well as Philemon, 
my aunt, and myself; and on the return of Grace, blushing for the 
vandalism committed by the Child of Destiny, she was informed 
of what had happened in her absence by Robley, who, of all 
persons, the most readily and rapidly could enter the mysterious 
cavern of her understanding. But long before she grasped the im- 
portance of the discovery to me and my children in dollars and 
cents, she, staring in wonder — an airy fantasy of astonishment of the 
most exquisite beauty — exclaimed, “ And just to think, Jane, if it 
had not been for me, the boy never would have been brought down 
stairs ; and if it had not been for the boy, the hole in the screen 
would not have been enlarged and the handwriting on the back of 
the pictures discovered ; and if it had not been for your aunt, the 
handwriting never would have been detected as that of the mate of 
‘ The Whale-Hawk ; ’ and if it had not been for Philemon, the 
screen never would have been purchased ; and if it had not been for 


JANE JANSEN. 


325 


Lily, the Korean salesman never would have sent the bottle of wine 
to your aunt, and the neck of the bottle of course would not have 
punctured the little hole in the screen ; and if it had not been for 
you, Jane, ‘ The Whale-Hawk ’ never would have gone into the har- 
bor of Gensan, and this Korean never would — Dear me ! I never 
heard of such a combination and complication in all my born days ! 
And really and truly, I verily believe, if it had not been for To-ga- 
to-maugh, and ’Squire Burkholder, and Robley, and Amanda Mar- 
kle, and Lawyer Clifford, and everybody that ever has lived, and 
everything that ever has happened, before and since the Johnstown 
Flood, the discovery never would have been made ! ” 

“ And Jane never would have inherited a fortune from her Uncle 
Davy Jones,” added Robley. 

“ Well, I never — but why did you not tell me so at first, you pro- 
voking man ! — you are getting to be as unintelligible in your speech 
as a lawyer ! But, no matter now ; let me kiss you, Jane, a thous- 
and times for every dollar you will get.” 


LX VI. 

During the following three days, my Aunt Melissa continued 
to be pale and agitated, and an object of ceaseless solicitude to 
me ; and I marveled that the effects of the shock which she had 
experienced on finding unexpectedly the log of “ The Whale-Hawk ” 
should be so persistent. 

“ You forget, Jane,” said Robley to me, in private, “ that your aunt 
is not as young and hardy as you. You forget, also, that she has 
exerted herself here more, perhaps, than she ever did in the same 
time in her life. She is exhausted and unstrung — nothing more.” 

I was not satisfied with this explanation ; but, during the ban- 
quet to the Koreans, when I saw her flushed with animation, and 
seemingly as cheery as usual, I forgot about her for the time being 
in my attention to the kind-hearted man who had relieved me in 
the first of my extremities, and his countrymen, and in my admira- 
tion of the metamorphosis that had taken place in Lily during the 
past few days of mental excitement and personal consequence — 
from a veritable dull-colored pupa state of diffidence, distrust, 
and self-abasement, to a highly-colored imago of confidence, airy 
equipoise, and international importance — the medium through 
which the great Asiatic and American divisions of the globe alone 
were intelligible to each other. 


326 


JANE JANSEN. 


By chance, however, in the midst of a general round of hilarity, 
I turned in the direction of my dear aunt and saw that she was as 
pale as ashes, staring fixedly into space, with the saddest expression 
on her face I ever beheld. 

At length — the banquet over, the guests gone, the lights turned 
down, and the silence of midnight pervading the house, I stole from 
the side of Philemon and sat down quietly by the side of my dear 
aunt’s bed to listen to her breathing and fathom if possible the se- 
cret of her distress from her unconscious movements and mutterings 
in sleep. 

After a while, I heard her moan, and, amid accelerated gaspings, 
cry out Help ! and realizing that she was enduring the agonies of a 
horrible dream, I wakened her ; and, after calming her with kisses, I 
said to her, “ You have seen in your dream, dear Auntie, the ship go 
down, and all the crew perish miserably in the waves. I know it 
from my own feelings and the circumstances. When you touched 
the wave-washed fragment of the log, you touched the dead of three 
and twenty years ago ; and it is the ghost of the past that haunts 
you now. But let me take you in my arms, dear Aunt, and the 
spectre will vanish.” 

And the remainder of the night, the dear woman slept as quietly 
as a babe, without a memory of the past to awaken in its undevel- 
oped brain a conscious thought or an unconscious dream. 


LXVII. 

The following day, a prepossessing gentleman of forty-five or fifty, 
presented himself to Philemon and myself, in the parlor of the 
Hotel Ozark, as Albert Bushnell, a special agent of the International 
Marine Insurance Company of New York. In response to Phile- 
mon’s telegram to the Company, he had come to examine the newly- 
found proofs of loss and investigate the circumstances connected 
with the discovery. 

Happily, at the same time, Lily’s relative, Tong Li, came to the 
hotel, too, to take Lily and her husband to the fair; and through 
Lily’s mediation, Mr. Bushnell was satisfied from the statements of 
the Korean salesman, that the screen had been made in Korea by a 
native artist, a short time before his death twenty years ago — that it 
had been imported and sold by himself ; and that the Korean paper, 
which constituted the outside of the screen, could not be cut or re- 
moved and afterward patched or replaced without leaving such 


JANE JANSEN. 


327 


traces of tampering as a child could detect at a glance. More than 
half of the screen, moreover, was still intact, which the agent, if he 
saw fit, might open and find — nobody could tell what, but, presum- 
ably, other pages torn from the log-book of the lost vessel which 
would furnish other circumstantial evidence in confirmation or con- 
tradiction of the data already found. 

The agent was shown into our room, and given the screen and its 
significant enclosures to inspect and consider at his leisure ; with 
permission, in the presence of Robley and ’Squire Burkholder, to 
remove any of the pages of the log from the Korean paper to 
which they were pasted, and open the remainder of the screen 
which was still a mystery as it came from the Mysterious Peninsula 
of Northeastern Asia ; and at length, after spending several hours 
in examining page after page of the ocean record — comparing 
the latitude and longitude of a number of days and other signifi- 
cant data which the log contained — the careful, cautious, and ex- 
acting man took off his glasses, wiped with a soft silk handkerchief 
his weary watery eyes, leaned back in his chair, and said, compla- 
cently, “ I am satisfied that these pages have been torn from the log- 
book of a whaler in the Sea of Korea or Japan in the autumn of 
1870 ; but I am not satisfied that this vessel was ‘ The Whale- 
Hawk.’ ” 

To this my aunt, still pale and trembling perceptibly, replied that 
she was positive the handwriting was that of Jasper Medbury, who 
had been placed in command of the ship by Skipper Jansen in 
Yokohama. 

“ But, Miss Graham,” objected Mr. Bushnell, bowing deferentially 
to my aunt ; “ indirectly you, as the aunt of Mrs. Holland, are an 
interested party, and unsupported as yet by the discovery of either 
the name of the vessel or that of the writer in this fragmentary rec- 
ord ; and unconsciously you may be laboring under a misappre- 
hension or delusion. Three and twenty years is a long time to re- 
member positively the countenance of another’s chirography, and 
especially, relatively speaking, of a stranger without associations. 
Is there anybody besides yourself who will testify that this is the 
handwriting of Jasper Medbury ? or have you anything in the 
world to offer in confirmation of your belief?” 

“ I have,” responded my dear aunt distinctly, but lowering her 
eyes, flushing, and trembling more perceptibly as she uttered the 
words. “ It was the hope of Jasper Medbury’s heart and mine to 
be united in marriage on the return of ‘ The Whale-Hawk ’ to Yo- 
kohama ; and I have in my possession, in my trunk in an adjoining 
room, all the letters and notes which he sent to me betimes while I 


328 


JANE JANSEN. 


was ashore and he was in command of the vessel in the harbor of 
Yokohama; and now, since the hidden within my heart and the se- 
cret of the sea for three and twenty years has been revealed, any and 
all the letters and notes which the good man addressed to me are 
open to the eyes of the world if need be.” 

“ I am satisfied — and I speak as well for the Company which I 
represent as for myself; and I humbly implore your pardon for in- 
vading the holy sepulchre in which the memory of the man whom 
you have loved and lost is enshrined.” Then, addressing me, “ Mrs. 
Holland, a New York draft, for the full amount of your policy, with 
interest from the date of the sinking of the ship, as appears in the 
log, to the present time, payable to yourself, will be forwarded to you 
in a few days. A receipt will accompany the draft, which, please 
sign and return. With my heartiest congratulations and best 
wishes, now, I beg leave to withdraw.” 


LXVIII. 

On our return to the Heart of Appalachia, we were accom- 
panied by Lily’s relative, Tong Li, and two of his countrymen, 
who were interested racially if not individually in Yalu and Cora, 
and their family, in America — the first of Korean settlers, perhaps, 
in the New World. 

Soon after, Mr. Bushnell registered at the wayside inn— ostensibly 
having come from New York for the sole purpose of handing to me 
in person the Insurance Company’s draft for the amount of insur- 
ance, principal and interest, due me to date ; but ten days afterward, 
he went away with my dear Aunt Melissa as his wife, carrying in 
her portemonnaie a check for half the sum I had received from 
the Insurance Company in payment for her undivided interest 
in the Heart of Appalachia, which she and her husband had 
conveyed by deed to me. 

Once having entered the holy sepulchre of the good woman’s 
heart, in which she had enshrined the image of Jasper Medburv for 
three and twenty years, and given a surcease to sorrow with such 
sympathy as only the opposite sexes feel for each other, it was 
easy for Mr. Bushnell to enter again, and by supplanting the 
spectre of the past, transmute the tomb of the dead at the bottom 
of the sea into a habitation of the living in the joyous efful- 
gence of the sun of the world. 




THE END. 





































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